Honourkeeper

by Nick Kyme

  Haggar’s death hit Morek hardest. The young thane had been one of his charges. He had taught him axe-craft and taken him under his wing. Now he was dead, and there was nothing Morek could do to change that fact. At least he had kept his clan’s honour. Another of the Skengdrangs had been chosen to carry the banner of Karak Ungor in Haggar’s stead. It was small cause for joy.

  So, the captain of the hearth guard was more sullen and morose than ever as he stood at the king’s table in his war tent. The elves would pay in blood for all the dwarf lives they’d taken. Morek had seen the dragon-helmed noble at the head of the elven knights. He knew it was the raven-haired blade-master that had fought and killed Haggar. When the elves had retreated the hearth guard captain has lost sight of Lethralmir in the crowd, but he knew in his heart they’d meet again. The slaying of Haggar was ignoble, and the raven-haired elf had a reckoning coming his way for that and more. Such a thing could not stand and Morek promised the young thane vengeance. Even if he could no longer claim it himself, Morek would do it in his name.

  Morek’s growing canker was further unleavened by the fact that Bagrik seemed now to favour Skarbrag Ironback for war counsel. Skarbrag was old and wise for sure, but the great beard had long since succumbed to senility and hadn’t fought on the battlefield for over a hundred years, let alone taken command of one. The king’s sudden magnanimity upon finding Brunvilda in Morek’s arms had obviously been feigned. Either that or Bagrik had found time to brood upon it during the battle and chose now to exact his grudge against the hearth guard captain.

  ‘The elves are fragile,’ stated Skarbrag, ‘their towers and walls will crumble swiftly beneath a determined assault.’

  Bagrik nodded sagely, pipe cinched between his lips and gestured towards his war table.

  ‘Here,’ he announced to the assembled throng of thanes, captains and masters in his presence. ‘This is where the fighting will be hardest.’ Bagrik wheezed as he spoke, and had grown more ashen in these last few hours than in all the days he had been at Karak Ungor since being wounded by the poison blade. Many amongst the war council exchanged grave glances with one another at the king’s condition, but dared not voice their concern. Bagrik was not to be denied. His will would ensure he would see the course.

  The king had pointed to the elven gatehouse. The entire structure of Tor Eorfith was rendered in finely carved blocks of stone and set out upon a map of the battleground drawn by Bagrik’s cartographers.

  Since the fight outside the elven city the dwarfs had pushed up, bringing their camp with them, and laid siege to Eyrie Rock. Even as the dwarf lords debated their tactics, work crews could be heard through the walls of the tent constructing rams and ladders, gathering rope for grapnels and digging trenches. Rangers had already been sent to the nearby forests to hew more wood. Stone was being carved from the mountain and rocky escarpments of the land then collected in baskets for the stone throwers.

  Smoke drifted through the tent flaps redolent with the aroma of iron, bronze and gromril as it was tempered in white-hot forges and bent to the dwarfs’ will. All metal workings fell under the iron-hard gaze of Agrin Oakenheart and his apprentices – Morek had been glad to learn that Hurbad had survived his wounding by the silver-maned elf mage, though the runesmith now walked with a pronounced limp.

  Racks of quarrels and thick-shafted bolts appeared by the hour and were stacked in makeshift armoury tents before being distributed amongst the dwarf crossbowmen and ballista crews. Piquets had gone up almost immediately, surrounding the elf city, all roads in and out watched by heavily-armoured patrols of hearth guard and longbeards. None could enter; none would be allowed to leave.

  ‘I would not wish to be stationed there,’ muttered Kandor beneath his breath, though Morek caught the gist of his words and couldn’t help but agree. Taking the gate was a brutal task; certainly elven resistance would be at its fiercest before the gatehouse. Leading such an assault would be something of a death sentence. A pity the slayers could not do it, but no self-respecting dwarf with a death oath would ever cower beneath the mantlet of a battering ram. That was not their fight.

  ‘High walls,’ said Kozdokk, guildmaster of the miners. He stroked his chin as he spoke, as if pondering a solution, ‘we’ll need siege towers,’ he added.

  Morek was about to answer when Grikk Ironspike chipped in ahead of him. ‘We could undermine the walls. I doubt the foundations are deep.’

  Bagrik nodded his approval as did Kozdokk, the guildmaster’s eyes narrowing with respect for the ironbreaker captain.

  Morek cursed under his breath. He had been about to suggest the very same thing in the hope of trying to get back into Bagrik’s good graces, but here Grikk had beaten him to the punch. It was galling.

  ‘The elven towers present a problem, also,’ growled Skarbrag. ‘I saw thrice-cursed sorcery in the windows. They are a haven for elgi wizards.’

  ‘Our stone throwers will put paid to them,’ declared Bagrik, followed by a bout of coughing. Once recovered, wiping away the blood from his mouth on his sleeve, the king fixed them all with his steely gaze and announced the deployments for the siege. He came to Morek last of all.

  ‘You’ll be here,’ he told his captain of the hearth guard in a snarl, ‘at the gate.’

  The night was many hours old by the time Rugnir was moving through the camp. He had fought at Grikk’s side in the flanking force, assisting the captain of the ironbreakers in negotiating the ungdrin caverns in order to ambush the elves swiftly, and was glad of the chance to fight. But still he wanted more. Nagrim was like a brother to him, one he loved dearly. Only he amongst all the dwarfs of Karak Ungor had been there at his death. It was a bitter memory, made harder to bear by the fact of his enforced sobriety, and one he planned to assuage with elven blood.

  Rugnir was not the only dwarf awake and abroad that night. Few could sleep, it seemed, as the final preparations were being made for the siege of Tor Eorfith. The ex-miner walked solemnly past the numerous tents and workshops. To the east he saw the distant elven city. Lantern light glowed dully in the windows and along the parapets and battlements where patrolling spearmen paced back and forth in syncopated rhythm. Both elf and dwarf launched ranging shots into the darkness with their war machines but these were not intended to hit home, merely prepare the field for the following day and ensure the maximum amount of slaughter would be reaped on both sides.

  Rugnir felt a strange empathy for the obvious anxiety felt by the elves. He felt it too and decided that he hated being sober, but hated the elves even more. Perhaps when all this was over, when he had sated the latter; he could indulge the former. Memories of Kraggin Goldmaster, Rugnir’s father, sprang unbidden into the dwarf’s mind as he walked. Rugnir gripped his father’s rune pick in his hand. It was an heirloom, borne by Buldrin, his grandfather, and his grandfather before that. Remarkable that Rugnir had not hocked it already, that the entropic dwarf hadn’t drunk or gambled it away. It was called Skrun-duraz, or Stone Hewer, and it had seen much better days. The pick blade itself was badly tarnished, encrusted by age and a thick patina of rust and grime. The gilded shaft no longer glimmered in the torchlight; rather it was dull and smeared by years of disuse. Rugnir wrenched his eyes away from the forlorn-looking weapon and pressed on with a heavy heart.

  When he reached the metalsmith’s forge, at the middle of the dwarf camp, Rugnir stopped. Stepping before the hot coals of the furnace, having been given the metalsmith’s blessing, he beat away the rust and the age-tarnished sheath around Skrun-duraz. Sweating over the blazing forge, Rugnir hammered and chipped and honed for several hours. When he was done, he cooled the rune pick in a large metal water basin and let the steam from it wash over his face. It was like being reborn – just like Skrun-duraz had been reforged, so too was Rugnir.

  Only when he retrieved the venerable weapon did he notice Agrin watching him from the shadows. The runelord was sitting on an upturned rock, studying Rugnir silently under his gimlet gaze. The ex-miner nodded
at the aging dwarf, who may have reciprocated. It was impossible to tell. The older a dwarf became, the less pronounced his gestures were. And Agrin Oakenheart was amongst the eldest of all dwarfs.

  Moving on, Rugnir had one more errand before he could retire for the night. As he left the forge, though, he felt as if someone was watching him. It wasn’t Agrin. It was something else. Rugnir decided to ignore it, chalking up his paranoia to the fact that he hadn’t had a drink in months. Right on cue, his dwarf stomach groaned in sympathy.

  Rugnir heard King Bagrik before he saw him. The sound of a hacking, phlegmy cough rattled from his war tent as the dwarf approached. Rugnir was about to enter when another dwarf stepped out of the king’s abode and into his path. Hetga was the matriarch of the priestesses of Valaya, and her old but handsome face was grave as she regarded Rugnir. Clearly she had been ministering to the king and, judging by her expression, to little avail.

  ‘Don’t keep him long,’ she warned brusquely. ‘He needs his rest. Though I dare say the cantankerous old bugger will be awake all night anyway.’ The matriarch shuffled past him and was gone into the dark.

  ‘Come then,’ growled the voice of the king as Rugnir stood outside, wary of entering Bagrik’s presence all of a sudden. Swallowing deeply, Rugnir went inside. ‘Morek, if you’ve come to protest over the–’ the king began. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, scowling when he saw Rugnir.

  Bagrik was sat on his throne, a thick blanket draped over his knees and another across his shoulders. He looked smaller and somehow diminished since Rugnir had seen him last, and now he was divested of his armour. The king had been poring over the ‘dead lists’ when the other dwarf had entered. His face was fixed in a scowl and his foul mood was obvious. The dead lists were the records of all the slain, all those who would be returning to Karak Ungor beneath a tarp to be then entombed forever with their ancestors in the vaults. A great many leaves of parchment littered the area around Bagrik’s throne and upon his lap. The death toll during the battle against the elves had been high and costly it seemed. Rugnir also noticed that Grumkaz Grimbrow was sitting in one corner of the room, stooped over the book of grudges transcribing all the recent edicts of the king.

  ‘Ignore him,’ snapped the king, when he’d followed Rugnir’s errant gaze. ‘He has much to occupy him and cannot hear us. What do you want at this hour, Goldmaster?’

  ‘I have heard that we plan to undermine the walls of the elf city,’ he said. ‘And that you’ll need expert tunnellers for the excavation.’

  ‘What are you proposing, Rugnir?’ asked the king shrewdly.

  ‘That I lead the dig,’ he answered boldly. ‘There are none better than I, no dwarf as fast,’ he reasoned.

  In his heyday, Rugnir and the Goldmaster clan were peerless miners and excavators. Lodemasters all, they excelled in the business of digging. It was how their clan had prospered so quickly in the first place. Bagrik knew all this, just as he had known Kraggin and Buldrin, Rugnir’s sires. This was a changed dwarf before him – no longer raucous and ebullient, nor frivolous or leeching.

  ‘You loved my son – you loved Nagrim?’ asked the king softly, seemingly older in that moment.

  ‘Like he was my own kin,’ Rugnir vowed, chin upraised proudly. ‘He was hard as grimazul, your boy, but with courage and heart.’

  Bagrik appraised the dwarf for a spell, judging him, making his decision.

  ‘You’ll lead the dig,’ he told Rugnir. ‘Bring that wall down for me. Bring it down for Nagrim,’ he added, and the bitterness in his voice returned.

  When Rugnir had gone, Bagrik sagged in his throne.

  ‘Just a little longer…’ he breathed, looking at the statue of Grungni set up in his war tent. The Ancestor God was depicted holding aloft a huge chunk of rock veined with silver. ‘I’ll need your strength,’ said Bagrik as he met Grungni eye-to-eye.

  The link was broken when Bagrik got the feeling he was being watched. A quick glance at Grumkaz showed him the grudgemaster was still engrossed. Other than that, he was alone.

  Must be getting old… he thought, and went back to the grim business of the dead lists.

  Bagrik didn’t see the shadow figure retreating from the confines of his war tent. None noticed it slipping quietly through the camp and back into the foothills.

  Five days the dwarfs had pounded the city of Tor Eorfith. Five days they had flung rock, rammed the gates and assaulted the walls. Still the elves would not yield. Even when their towers had been toppled by stone and lightning, they didn’t give in. Even when their warriors died in droves and the dwarfs pressed relentlessly, they would not capitulate. The foundations of Eyrie Rock had been proven strong. They matched the will of its inhabitants. The elves, despite the dwarfs’ earlier confidence, would not be easy to break.

  ‘Loose!’

  Morek heard the gruff voice of Master Engineer Lodkin as he shouted for another volley. Over a dozen hunks of mountain rock idled through the air from the stone thrower battery on the ridge above, seemingly in slow motion, before crashing against Tor Eorfith’s walls in showers of marble and granite.

  The hearth guard captain followed their trajectory with some satisfaction as the elves patrolling the parapets were crushed or fled before the barrage. Sat upon a small rise with his cohort of fifty hearth guard, Morek was glad of the view and the respite from ramming the gates. It seemed nothing, not even the gromril-headed battering ram forged by Agrin Oakenheart, could break down the door to the elven city. After their latest attempts had yielded little, Morek had been ordered back from the siege lines to protect the dwarf war engines whilst they loosed in concerted volleys.

  Occasionally the chunks of spinning stone would be blasted apart by the elf mages on the battlements casting fireballs or lightning arcs, and the air would be filled with shards of falling rock. A few hundred feet in front of the stone throwers, Morek and his warriors raised shields as another granite shower rained down on their heads.

  When it was over, Morek returned his attention to the elven city walls and saw a banner upraised. From behind a line of spearmen there emerged a host of elf archers. Immediately they began pouring arrows in a steel-fanged torrent towards the stone throwers. Even at extreme long range, the sweaty dwarf crews were forced into cover by the elven volleys. As they retreated and the stone thrower barrage abated, another banner went up. It was followed by the peal of horns.

  ‘Valaya’s golden cups!’ Morek spat the pipe he was smoking out of his mouth then hurried to his feet and took up his axe.

  The gates to Tor Eorfith were opening.

  Morek was already shouting orders, rallying his hearth guard into defensive positions. Drummers rattled out the formation in sharp staccato beats as the dwarfs moved in front of the entrenched war machines and into the path of the elven knights hammering out of the city. The dwarf trenches and abatis were nigh on empty. Most of the troops were away from the battleline preparing for the next big push whilst the war machines tried to soften the hardy nut the warriors needed to crack. Only Morek and his hearth guard stood between the elven sortie and the annihilation of the stone throwers.

  ‘Shields together,’ he cried as soon as the hearth guard were ready and in position. Unwillingly, Morek’s mind returned to the earlier battle on the plain. He had seen what the elven dragon knights could do. He stroked the talisman around his neck without thinking then took a firmer grip on his rune axe and shield.

  Rugnir heard thunder through the many layers of earth between him and the surface. Though the din of the drilling engine was loud, the sound from above carried well and the miner felt it as much as heard it. It had taken five days to get to this point. Sweating at the rock face, digging deep into the bowels of the world, Rugnir had brought the dwarf excavators to within a hundred feet or so of the foundations to Tor Eorfith. He expected to hit rock in the next hour. From there they would undermine the walls and send them crumbling to the ground for King Bagrik’s reserve forces to exploit.

  ‘Hard wo
rk eh, ufdi?’ Rugnir remarked to Kandor with some of his old cheek.

  The dwarf merchant had offered to join the mining expedition almost as soon as it was mooted. He had long since stripped out of his finery and adopted more practical attire of course garments and a rugged miner’s helmet.

  ‘You look almost like a proper dwarf,’ he joked with good humour.

  ‘We Silverbeards know gold,’ Kandor said by way of explanation, ‘and we know tunnelling also. It is long past due that I got my hands dirty again,’ he added humbly.

  Kozdokk, head of the Miners’ Guild, smacked Rugnir on the back before he could reply. Rugnir was stripped down to tabard and breeches, a black pot helmet on his head with numerous candles affixed to it by their waxy emissions. He was sweating profusely and wiped a swathe of dirt across his forehead as he turned to the guildmaster.

  ‘Not far,’ Rugnir cried above the crushing of rock and the churning of earth.

  Kozdokk nodded, chewing on a hunk of stonebread as he watched the work of his miners keenly. The guildmaster had brought the drilling engine all the way from Karak Ungor. A solid metal chassis supported an iron plated cage that ran on large, broad wheels. At the end was a gromril drill, tipped with diamond. A series of mechanical cranks and roped pulleys drove the engine itself, pure dwarf sweat and hard labour needed to turn it in order to build momentum. Teams of sappers worked either side of it, hauling back chunks of discarded rock to the waiting strings of mules that were led from the tunnel fully-laden and to the waiting baskets of engineers that supplied the stone throwers and shored up the dwarf entrenchments. Other miners worked with pick and shovel in tandem with the machine. Under Rugnir’s expert guidance, progress was swift.

  The large cohort of ironbreakers behind them, with Grikk Ironspike at their lead, would not have long to wait.

  Morek felt the ground trembling beneath him as the elven knights charged. The hearth guard had locked shields, anchoring themselves around the captain, their lynchpin. As Morek peered through the gap between shields, he saw the warrior leading the dragon knights.