Honourkeeper

by Nick Kyme

  Morek thought he was dead. All around him the clamour of voices drifted in and out. Peering through a dense fog, his gaze went to elven battlements directly above him. When he saw who stood there, shimmering in his ancestral armour, the hearth guard captain knew he was but a breath away from Gazul’s Gate.

  ‘Nagrim…’ he rasped through bloodied teeth, and passed out.

  ‘Nagrim!’ the cry went up from one of the fleeing hearth guard as he pointed to the battlements. In the frantic press to win the battle in the courtyard, the walls had all but been abandoned. The prince of Ungor stood there alone, the corpses of elf sentries slumped around him.

  Other dwarfs took up the chorus swiftly and it built to a powerful crescendo as all those close enough to see gazed upon the slain hero of Karak Ungor in fear and awe. The legacy of the hold, personified in iron and gromril, had come back from the dead to fight alongside his kin in their hour of need. In one hand, Nagrim held his battle horn; in the other, a warhammer. Raising the weapon aloft, it was a rallying cry the dwarfs sorely needed and they cheered as one.

  The effect was miraculous.

  Drums sounded, pipes rang out and the warriors of Karak Ungor held up their banners once more and returned to the fight. The hearth guard found their courage at last, and turned, thundering back to the gate even as their hero descended the battlement steps to meet the foe.

  Bagrik was stunned into silence. He did not even notice the slowing of his shield bearers as the apparition of his dead son disappeared from sight.

  ‘Not possible,’ he muttered again, when he’d found his voice. It wore Nagrim’s armour. Bagrik’s warriors had cried his name. But…

  The king’s face darkened abruptly as he remembered how ‘Nagrim’ had cradled the battle horn. He hadn’t noticed it at first. He had been too shocked by what he thought he had seen. The hand that gripped around that horn was crooked, Bagrik recognised it even beneath the dwarf’s armoured gauntlet.

  ‘Lothvar…’ he snarled, face creasing into a scowl.

  Brunvilda had defied him again.

  Bagrik was close enough to the gate now to see over the heads of his clamouring warriors and the elven force within. Through a gap between banners, he recognised Ithalred. The elf prince was battling furiously, slaying dwarfs with every stroke. Lothvar had descended into that melee. It could be him falling beneath that sword next.

  ‘Lothvar,’ Bagrik said again, though this time his tone was urgent. ‘Get me through the gate,’ the dwarf king raged at his shield bearers suddenly. ‘Do it now!’

  In the tunnels, the miners and ironbreakers were taking a severe beating. Dwarf corpses littered the ground, for precious little reply. Alone, the sword masters were few and eminently defeatable, but with the half-naked elf blade-master they had the edge.

  Rugnir ducked the swipe of an elf greatsword, before ramming the head of his pick into the startled sword master’s chest. He wrenched it out, the wound spitting gore, and stepped over the still-cooling body into another fight.

  ‘Stay with me, ufdi,’ he said to Kandor, who fought at the other dwarf’s back and was just trying to stay alive. Old Kozdokk was already dead, skewered by a flurry of elven silver. Rugnir tried to keep the guildmaster’s bloody carcass out of his eye-line.

  Kandor nodded, too tired to speak as he heaved enough breath into his lungs to fight.

  Somewhere in the madness, Grikk and his ironbreakers were struggling. Rugnir had lost track of the ebb and flow of the battle almost immediately.

  Tunnel fighting was chaotic at best. Sound resonated in the blackened confines of the subterranean; it echoed off the walls and fell away abruptly to nothing. In the gloom, shadows became real and foes became as shadows. The stench of blood and death was intensified. The effect was disconcerting. Hard enough to fight grobi in the dark places under the earth; battling a foe like the elves and their murderous talisman was proving almost impossible.

  And then there he was… a crimson phantom, his blood-slicked body shimmering like red oil. Eyes white with crazed fury bored into Rugnir like daggers and the dwarf felt his courage draining.

  ‘Name of Valaya,’ he whispered at the spectre of death stalking towards him.

  Salvation came from an unlikely source. Kandor appeared at Rugnir’s side and one word from his lips saved them both.

  ‘Malbeth?’

  The feral elf stalled and recognition dawned upon his face.

  ‘Kandor…’

  Anger bled away, supplanted by anguish. Malbeth lowered his blades and let his arms drop to his sides.

  ‘End it,’ he mouthed to his erstwhile friend and shut his eyes.

  A half dozen dwarf axes fell upon the elf, cutting him down at last. Kandor’s had been the first. The merchant thane was sobbing by the time it was done. Rugnir gathered the other dwarf to him, putting a meaty arm around his shoulder, and let the miners and ironbreakers past him – now freed with the death of Malbeth – to finish the sword masters. Advantage had swung back into the dwarfs’ favour. The elves were few, and though skilled, could not last long.

  It was over in a matter of minutes. The tunnel was theirs. Engineers with the zharrum were rallied swiftly. Now, the south wall would crumble.

  Bagrik had gained the gate when the south wall of Tor Eorfith came down. Trumpets sounded loudly in the chaos as the dwarf reserves piled through the breach. The dwarf king did not need to see it to know that the elves’ doom was now sealed. Strangely, it gave him no pleasure. Though he had tried, Bagrik could find no sign of Lothvar amongst the fighting or the fallen. He hoped that Grungni favoured him in all the ways that he had not. There was but one more thing left for Bagrik to do. Across the courtyard, he saw Prince Ithalred. The elf was tiring now. No warrior, however skilled, could reap a tally like he had and not feel fatigue. Bagrik’s own malady evened the scales. The king was glad it would at least be a fair fight.

  Cutting through a regiment of spearmen, the remaining hearth guard having gathered around their king as soon as he had arrived, Bagrik at last found himself face-to-face with his true nemesis.

  There was no need to bellow a challenge this time, no pithy words or caustic insults. The elf prince knew this was coming and faced the dwarf king with dignity, offering a salute with his blade which Bagrik did not reciprocate.

  The old king unclasped the faceplate from his helmet and let it fall to the ground. He wanted the elf to be able to see his face when he killed him.

  Pleasantries over, Ithalred fell upon Bagrik. Blows came and went in a flurry, elven deftness and speed versus dwarf strength and aggression. Ithalred lunged, thrust, cut and sliced as his sword flashed like silver lightning. Bagrik weathered the barrage with typical dwarf obstinance, using his haft and blade to parry, getting in swings between the elf’s blindingly fast attacks. The shield bearers did not intervene; they merely kept their king aloft while he fought.

  Ithalred tried to open up Bagrik’s defences by crafting an intricate array of attacks, but the dwarf king was equal to it. He replied with a forceful assault of his own. Such was the dwarf’s fury that Ithalred felt every bone-rattling strike like a hammer blow.

  Bagrik knew the elf’s endurance was waning. No creature alive could match a dwarf for tenacity. As Bagrik pounded him, raining blow after heavy blow against Ithalred’s improvised defence, the elf began to flag and sought a swift end to the duel. Waiting for a gap in the dwarf king’s relentless assault, Ithalred lunged aiming for Bagrik’s exposed neck. It was the moment of recklessness that the dwarf king had been waiting for. Feigning loss of balance, Bagrik allowed the elf to stretch and lead with the point of his sword. At the last moment, though, he twisted and brought the flat of his axe down on Ithalred’s unprotected grip. The sudden blow forced the elf’s sword aside. It grazed Bagrik’s gorget before Ithalred dropped it from his nerveless fingers. Fashioning a return strike, Bagrik first caught the elf’s wrist, as he went in from the dwarf king’s blind side with his short sword, and snapped it. Ithalred suppresse
d a scream of agony when his wrist broke. He gasped blood when Bagrik finished the move, bringing his rune axe down onto the elf’s exposed shoulder, cleaving through his armour and embedding bone.

  Ithalred was breathing hard, the rune axe still lodged in his clavicle and his broken wrist limp in the dwarf king’s iron grip.

  Spitting blood, he rasped, ‘Allow me a warrior’s death.’

  Bagrik’s eyes were cold and lifeless.

  ‘You killed my son,’ he replied. Bagrik ripped out his rune axe with both hands and roared as he beheaded Prince Ithalred.

  ‘Behold,’ yelled Bagrik, once he had caught his breath, pointing down to the decapitated elf at his feet, ‘your lord is dead!’

  Nearby a few of the elves and dwarfs stopped fighting to look.

  ‘Behold, Prince Ithalred is slain,’ declared the king, as more and more warriors turned to face him. ‘Cease now… Cease!’ he cried. ‘It is over. You elgi are defeated.’ Across the length and breadth of Tor Eorfith, throughout the battlefield mire beyond, in the lowest depths of the city’s foundations as the sound of Bagrik’s declaration carried, elves and dwarfs together lowered their weapons and stopped fighting.

  Rugnir had emerged into the courtyard with Kandor, Grikk and the other survivors of the tunnel battle in tow. It had stopped raining and night was fading, giving way to a rising sun in the east. His warrior band was not far from the king, and he saw the pained expression on Bagrik’s face as he spoke, knew that the poison ravaging the king’s body was all but done with him as he mustered a final effort before the dawn.

  ‘Leave this place,’ shouted the king, his voice echoing around the courtyard. ‘Go back to your island in shame. Your treachery has blighted any friendship, any accord with us dawi. You are no longer welcome in the Karaz Ankor.’

  The damning words of the dwarf king fell harder than any blow. Valorian, the sole surviving elf noble issued a clipped command in his native tongue and his warriors sheathed their swords and shouldered their weapons. There were precious few left in any case to make any kind of last stand. Though, truthfully, the elves had lost heart. Valorian had not been aware of their betrayal at first; he was not party to Ithalred’s desperate plan to garner the dwarfs’ martial might.

  He knew it now, he had known since before the siege and it had sat ill with him even then, just, he suspected, as it had with Korhvale. It was his greatest regret that the Chracian had not been found. Elven horns sounded mournfully and the survivors of Tor Eorfith gathered into a bedraggled column with Commander Valorian at the front. The noble marched his warriors out, together with all who remained of the elven colony. They would head for their ships still at dock along the river to the east and from there back across the Great Ocean to Ulthuan.

  ‘Set me down,’ Bagrik growled, grateful for an end to the rocking of his war shield. He took off his helmet, watching the dwarfs in front of the gate parting to let the elves through. Reaching over without looking, he took a fistful of earth in his hand and clenched it tightly. Letting his rune axe slip from his fingers, Bagrik closed his eyes and exhaled a lingering breath. It was to be his last.

  EPILOGUE

  All Hail the Queen

  Karak Ungor was silent as a tomb. The workshops were quiet. No clatter of hammers or ringing upon anvils could be heard. No voices called out, no murmuring of longbeards, no scrape and clash of picks on stone. No clank of armour as warriors patrolled. Even the gold counters were stilled. The hold had simply stopped so that all within could bear remembrance to their king, Bagrik Boarbrow. Such a thing was unprecedented. Never in all the days of the Delving Hold had utter quietude descended, but descend it had and like a bitter black veil.

  In the days since the siege at Tor Eorfith, Bagrik had been returned to his hold. Grikk found him sat upon his shield, slate-grey eyes glaring sternly forever more, a fistful of earth in his leathery grasp.

  The king is dead. The solemn pronouncement had rung around the battlefield like a mournful bell.

  The king is dead.

  As Bagrik’s body was taken up by his shield bearers, a tearful Morek had led a slow procession from the city all the way to the camp and from there to Karak Ungor. In his wake, the miners and engineers had descended, smashing rock and hewing stone, finishing what the siege engines started and leaving Tor Eorfith a ruin.

  Upon the dwarfs’ return, Bagrik was entombed with Nagrim. There was a palpable wave of relief at the sight of the slain prince. There had been those who swore they had seen him battle the elves, even fought by his side, but none could remember what happened to him after the siege. He had simply been lost from sight.

  Some, the overly superstitious or gullible, suggested Nagrim’s body might not be in the temple of Valaya when the dwarfs came back, that he had somehow taken leave of his own death. It was not so. Rangers had scoured the battlefield afterwards, and the crags beyond, but no sign could be found of Nagrim or his apparent spectre. There was just his suit of armour left inexplicably in a shadowy alcove, laid out with reverence and respect. It too was taken back to the hold and entombed in the vaults.

  Only Brunvilda knew the truth of it, and she would not say.

  In time, missives would be sent by the High King Gotrek Starbreaker of Karaz-a-Karak pledging his support and expressing his grief. A new liege lord of Karak Ungor would be chosen by the elders, but for now it was Brunvilda who ruled. Addressing her throng in the wake of her husband’s death was her first royal act as matriarch.

  ‘We dawi stand alone,’ the queen began.

  She too was alone, stood before the throne of Ungor in the Great Hall.

  Brunvilda was glorious. Clad in her ancestral armour, the shimmering crown set upon her brow flashed like a star of fire. Bedecked in jewels, clasped with vambrace and greave, she was every bit the warrior queen. A short cloak hung heavily from her shoulders; heavy like the dour mood that pervaded throughout the hold. In her hand, stone head held downward to the floor, was Brunvilda’s rune hammer.

  The vast chamber that stretched in front of her was teeming with dwarfs. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder like a mighty iron sea. All the clans were present; all the longbeards, the veterans, the craftguilds, masters, artisans and merchants. No dwarf that day, save for the gate guards – and even they had their heads bowed and their bodies still – wasn’t present for the queen’s address.

  Such was the magnitude of the gathering that the huge double doors to the Great Hall were thrown open wide and the dwarfs trailed back down the long corridor beyond for as far as the eye could see.

  Flickering torches cast a weak and sombre light on the scene in the Great Hall. Even the statues of kings appeared bowed and subdued.

  ‘Like the mountains we stand alone,’ Brunvilda said, ‘and like the mountains we will endure. We are rocks, you and I. Neither man nor elgi, nor grobi, nor any other creature of the world that looks upon our domain with jealous eyes will ever break us… ever!’ Her voice echoed loudly through the massive chamber, resonating in all those present.

  ‘They will find us resolute and belligerent. They will find a wall of iron and bronze, rooted in the bedrock of the very earth. Such things do not yield to force.’ Brunvilda paused. Looking around the room, her gaze was as hard as her words, as hard as iron.

  ‘Dark days are ahead, make no mistake about that,’ she warned. ‘We must look to ourselves for salvation. When the enemies of the Karaz Ankor come, and mark me they will… we will not bow to them, nor will we be put asunder. We are dawi! By all the Ancestor Gods, we will smash our foes to dust should they come to our walls. We are steadfast. Together, we will never be defeated. Never! So says, Brunvilda, Queen of Karak Ungor!’

  She thrust her rune hammer into the air and the throng roared in affirmation.

  The sound was deafening. It shook the walls and made the earth tremble. The dwarfs were defiant; their anger and their bitterness gave them strength and solidarity. But dark days were coming, and they were closer than anyone could have known…
>
  Tor Eorfith was like a skeleton of shattered rock and broken spires. The former glory of the elven city had been smashed utterly from the face of the world. The miners and sappers led by Rugnir had set about their task with extreme prejudice.

  Within the shadows of the bowels of a ruined tower, Lothvar awoke and found he was trussed to a slab of fallen stone. He remembered only snatches of how he came to be here. Like his mother had told him in the Temple of Valaya, he had found the battlesite by following the trail of his kinsdwarfs and fought with his father against the elves. His heart had sung, unshackled for the first time, exultation filling the dwarf prince as his kin had cheered. It did not matter that they shouted his brother’s name; all that mattered was that he was there and had rallied the army. Lothvar had never been happier in all his miserable, mistreated life.

  A presence in the hollowed-out tower got his attention and wrenched his thoughts back to his predicament. Once the battle was over, Lothvar had slipped away. He had wanted desperately to stay, but his mother had forbid it. Lothvar didn’t really understand her reasons as she had explained them, but he did not wish to bring shame to his father by exposing the lie of his existence, so he had disappeared.

  It had not been difficult; all eyes had been upon his father when he had retreated back over the wall. Once on the other side, he had hiked away from the battlefield. Both armies were spent, and none had the strength or inclination to follow him. Once out of sight, Lothvar had removed his ancestral armour, and placed it carefully out of the way where he knew it would eventually be found. Moving quickly, a hand before his eyes to ward off the painful light of the rising sun, Lothvar had tracked his way through the crags using scent and sound to guide him. There within a shallow gulley, beneath the shadow of a rocky promontory, he found the knapsack he had secreted before the siege began. There was a hooded cloak, which he had donned at once drawing the cowl to fend off the bright sun, food and weapons. He slung the crossbow over his back and cinched the hand axe to his belt. Then he began to make his way into the mountains.