by Warhammer
‘Left then,’ said Hamnir.
Gotrek and Leatherbeard led the way across the chamber towards the left-hand arch. Their path took them past the pile of bones, boots and breeches near the cook pot, and as they walked by it, things glinted from it in the lamplight.
Galin stopped, followed by Ragar, and then Hamnir. The others turned to see what they were looking at.
‘Is that…?’ said Galin.
‘Look at that now,’ said Ragar.
‘It is,’ said Hamnir.
‘Gold!’ said Arn, and stepped to the pile of bones, tossing aside a ribcage and squatting down. The others were right behind him. Even Gotrek was pushing forwards.
Felix looked over their shoulders. The ground amidst the bones and torn clothes was littered with rings, neck chains, unset gems, armbands, gold ingots and the coins of a dozen different nations. The dwarfs snatched them up in handfuls. Narin snapped a finger from a skeleton hand to get at a silver ring. Karl was prying a gold tooth from a grinning skull.
‘Stupid trolls,’ chuckled Ragar, scooping greedily. ‘Throwing away a fortune for stew meat.’
‘They’re animals,’ said Narin. ‘The lower orders don’t understand the ecstasy of gold.’
‘Do we have time for this?’ asked Felix, looking anxiously behind him. ‘The trolls could come back at any moment.’
The dwarfs ignored him.
Thorgig batted at Galin’s hand. ‘That was mine, Olifsson,’ he snapped. ‘I touched it first.’
‘And you dropped it,’ said Galin. ‘It’s mine now.’
‘Mind your reach!’ snarled Leatherbeard to Narin. ‘This is my bit.’
‘Can I help it if I have longer arms than some,’ said Narin, his eyes glowing.
‘And stickier fingers.’ Leatherbeard shoved Narin, who fell back on his haunches.
‘Shove me, will you?’ growled Narin, reaching for his dagger.
‘Cousins! Cousins!’ cried Hamnir. ‘Stop this! Stop this! What are we doing?’
Felix breathed a sigh of relief. The prince was going to talk some sense into the others. He at least realised the dangers of their position.
‘This is not the dwarf way,’ said Hamnir, ‘scrabbling like men for scraps of bread. We are a military company on a military mission. This treasure is therefore spoils, and subject to strict division. Now come, take it all out of your pockets and pile it in the centre here. We will see what we have and make our split accordingly. Ten equal shares.’
Gotrek’s snort interrupted him. ‘Equal shares? That’s rich broth coming from you, oathbreaker.’ He turned to the others. ‘I’d watch him if I were you. He’s apt to put a little extra aside for himself.’
Thorgig sprang up, fists bunched. ‘Do you call Prince Hamnir dishonest? You go too far at last, Slayer.’
‘That’s our chief you’re speaking of,’ said Ragar stepping up beside Thorgig.
‘Have a care,’ said Arn.
‘A red crest don’t scare us,’ said Karl.
‘Come, Slayer,’ said Narin. ‘Can you truly think that a prince known throughout the holds as a plain dealer would cheat on shares?’
‘This from a dwarf who destroyed the property of my clan and won’t make recompense,’ sneered Galin.
‘I don’t think,’ said Gotrek. ‘I know. He’s done it before.’
‘Gurnisson,’ said Hamnir, brow lowered.
‘Oh, he’ll have a reason,’ said Gotrek, ‘some excuse why this piece or that piece shouldn’t be shared out with the rest. He’s good with words. It all sounds reasonable, but whatever it is, in the end, you don’t get all that’s coming to you with Prince Hamnir the Honest around.’
‘You don’t get any understanding with Gotrek Gurnisson around, either,’ said Hamnir hotly. ‘The head and the heart don’t matter to him, only the purse. Sometimes I think he’s more of a merchant than I am. A dwarf who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’
‘So, you admit these things he speaks of?’ asked Narin, his eyebrows raising.
‘Not as he says them,’ said Hamnir. ‘I cheated no one. In each case, I asked all parties if something could be held out. Put it to a vote. Only Gotrek voted no. The others had some compassion, some belief that the spirit of justice is more important than the letter of the law.’
‘Not in every case, oathbreaker,’ said Gotrek. ‘In one case you just took what you wanted.’
‘Because you wouldn’t listen to reason!’ shouted Hamnir.
His voice echoed through the hall, seeming to come back to them louder than it had left his mouth. The dwarfs looked around warily as the echoes faded to nothing.
‘Gotrek, Prince Hamnir,’ said Felix, into the silence. ‘Perhaps you should return to this debate, and the division of the spoils, at a later date. We are not safe here, and we still have a long way to go.’
‘I second that,’ said Narin. ‘We should move on.’
After a moment, Gotrek shrugged. ‘Fair enough. Might be less of us to divide amongst at the end anyway.’
Hamnir nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘and as my honesty has been questioned, I will not hold it. Nor will any of my hold.’
The dwarfs looked around. Thorgig, Arn, Karl and Ragar, were all of Karak Hirn; that left Galin, Narin, Leatherbeard, Gotrek and Felix.
Gotrek shook his head. ‘I’m not carrying all that. It’ll get in the way.’
‘Aye,’ said Leatherbeard. ‘No thanks.’
‘Nor I,’ said Narin. ‘I know my weaknesses. I’ll not be put in the way of temptation.’
‘Er,’ said Galin. ‘I would be honoured to hold the plunder. The honesty of the Stonemonger clan is known from Worlds Edge Mountains to–’
‘And the dwarf who asks for the honour is the dwarf to keep your eye on,’ interrupted Thorgig. ‘You’re not holding my share, Stonemonger.’
‘You question my honesty!’ said Galin, standing. ‘Dwarfs have died for less!’
‘Quiet!’ snapped Hamnir. He looked at Felix. ‘The man will hold it.’
‘The man?’ Galin gaped. ‘But all dwarfs know men are greedy, grasping little–’
Gotrek growled menacingly.
Narin laughed. ‘They say the same of us, but you’ll note that he was the only one who didn’t dive into the pile with both hands grasping. And anyone who’s thrown in their lot with a Slayer for twenty years can’t be accused of being a man who puts his holdings first.
‘But, prince,’ said Thorgig, ‘he is the Slayer’s companion. He will favour Gurnisson over the rest of us.’
‘If he does, I’ll kill him,’ said Gotrek.
Hamnir nodded. ‘Gurnisson may be a stiff, unbending berserker with the disposition of a dyspeptic cave bear, but he is as honourable as an ancestor. It isn’t honesty he’s wanting, but heart. He will not let Herr Jaeger cozen us.’
Arn shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’
‘Suits me,’ said Karl.
‘If the prince says aye, who are we to say nay,’ said Ragar.
‘If that’s the way of it,’ said Galin with a stiff shrug, ‘that’s the way of it.’
The dwarfs quickly emptied their pockets and pouches into Felix’s pack and made ready to march again. Felix groaned as he stood and shouldered the pack. The greedy little grubbers had added a stone’s weight to his load – they who could lift twice their own weight with ease.
The party took the left-hand arch and started down a corridor lined with long-unused dining halls and common rooms, the outlines of their sturdy furniture softened by centuries of dust. This had not been a true hold, only an outpost, a satellite mine, meant to feed the furnaces and anvils of Karak Hirn. Still, it was built with all the usual dwarf care and quality. There had been no cave-ins in the intervening centuries since the dwarfs had abandoned it. No water stains marred the walls. The flagstones that lined the floor had not cracked. The decorative borders looked as if they had been cut only yesterday.
After a few hundred feet, they came to the rusty rai
ls of a mine cart track, which connected the deeps of the mine with the smelting rooms. The rails branched and turned down crossing corridors, glinting in the darkness. Here and there, they had been pulled up, the wooden ties beneath them too, but most were undisturbed. The dwarfs stuck to the main trunk, which soon led them to the shaft of an ancient dwarf steam lift, meant to raise and lower crowds of dwarfs, carts, mules and tonnes of ore at a time.
Galin, the only engineer among them, had a look at the steam engine that had once powered the thing, built into a room behind it. He came out shaking his head, his beard and eyebrows trailing dust and cobwebs. ‘Not a chance,’ he said. ‘Half the gears have rusted into place, and someone’s been at the boiler with a pickaxe. Take a week to make it go. Maybe more.’
‘Don’t know if the ropes would hold us anyway,’ said Narin, holding his lantern out into the shaft. The huge hawser cables were frayed and black with mould.
Felix looked down the shaft. He couldn’t see the carriage in the darkness below, but the ropes were tight, so it was down there somewhere.
‘Wasn’t to be expected anyway,’ said Hamnir. ‘We’ll take the ladder.’
A narrow ledge led out to a square notch in the left side of the shaft, cut just deep enough for a dwarf to climb down into the depths on the ladder that was bolted to its wall without being knocked off by the passing of the lift carriage. Leatherbeard went first. The others lined up behind him.
‘Are there any other ways to get down?’ asked Felix, waiting his turn. ‘I’ve had my fill of climbing recently.’
‘Oh, aye,’ said Karl. ‘You can walk down through all the deeps by ramp and stair.’ He grabbed an iron rung and started down into darkness.
‘A lot of walking though,’ said Arn, following him.
‘This way’s faster,’ said Ragar.
‘I wouldn’t mind the walk,’ said Felix, sighing, but he stepped onto the ladder behind Ragar and began lowering himself down rung by rusty rung.
Gotrek came last, for the dwarfs were concerned that the trolls might return home and follow them down. He exchanged his torch for a belt-hung lamp, so that he could have both hands free to climb.
For all Felix’s grumbling, he found the descent easy. The ladder was dwarf work, and though over two hundred years old, it was still strong and firmly fixed to the wall. At regular intervals, they passed further deeps – wide, rough tunnels, laid with cart rails. Sometimes there would be abandoned mine carts at the lip. In one, something larger than a rat scrabbled away in the darkness. In another, picks and shovels were scattered about.
‘Those aren’t dwarf tools,’ said Ragar.
‘No,’ said Arn. ‘We took everything with us when we closed up shop. Dwarfs don’t waste.’
‘Someone else looking for scraps,’ said Karl, snorting. ‘Fool humans, most like. Should know better. Dwarfs don’t leave untapped veins.’ He looked up the ladder at Felix. ‘No offence, human.’
Felix sighed. ‘None taken.’
Halfway between the fifth and sixth level down, they found the elevator carriage, an open steel and wood cage hanging straight and true in the shaft as if it had only paused for a moment. Felix looked at it longingly as they passed it. It would have been luxury to step onto it and ride the rest of the way down, but closer inspection suggested that might be a very speedy trip. Near the steel rings that the ropes were fastened to, the hawsers were frayed and thin, as if rats had been chewing on them. It looked as if the merest feather landing upon the carriage would be enough to snap the rope and send the whole thing crashing into the nether depths.
‘I am suddenly glad the engine wasn’t working,’ he said to no one in particular.
Another level down and Leatherbeard held up a hand. ‘Something moving below,’ he said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Felix and the dwarfs stopped, listening. At first, Felix heard nothing, but then he caught it – a faint scratching and skittering, echoing up the shaft. It was getting louder.
‘What is it?’ asked Thorgig. ‘Rats?’
‘Isn’t trolls,’ said Arn. ‘That’s certain.’
‘Whatever it might be,’ said Hamnir, ‘it’s coming this way.’
Narin pulled a torch from his pack, lit it from the lamp at his belt, and dropped it down the shaft. The dwarfs watched its ball of illumination fall swiftly away from them. Felix’s heart lurched as, two levels down, the torch flashed past a churning mass of hairless, dog-sized monstrosities, briefly glinting off their jagged fangs and bulging black eyes, and the razor claws with which they were climbing the shaft’s rough-hewn walls. Then the torch dropped below the things, returning them to darkness. There had been dozens of them.
‘What are those?’ choked Felix.
‘Cave squigs,’ spat Karl. ‘Grobi rats.’
‘Thought we’d killed them all off,’ said Ragar.
‘We did,’ said Arn, ‘two hundred years ago.’
‘Difficult fighting them here,’ said Thorgig, frowning. ‘They’ll tear us off.’
Felix shuddered. After all his years with Gotrek, he didn’t mind a stand-up fight. He would have faced down this pack of horrors undaunted on level ground, but hanging off a ladder over a bottomless pit, with only one arm free to defend himself? No, thank you. He could already feel their teeth and claws tearing into him, ripping him savagely from the rungs.
‘Wait here,’ said Gotrek. He started climbing rapidly back up the ladder.
‘Wait here?’ asked Felix.
‘Where’s he off to?’ growled Galin.
Felix shrugged. He had no idea.
The squigs were closing swiftly, much quicker than the dwarfs could have climbed back up the ladder. Felix could hear their hungry mewlings, and make out the movement of their limbs in the darkness. Most were in the shaft, but a few climbed the ladder. They reminded Felix of cockroaches scurrying up a storm drain.
The dwarfs drew their weapons and hung, one-handed, from the ladder, grimly awaiting their doom. Felix gripped his sword and prayed to Sigmar that whatever Gotrek was up to, he would hurry up about it. Leatherbeard had undone his belt, and was slipping it through a rung of the ladder to re-buckle it around his waist so he could hang from it and have both hands free.
Scores of glistening eyes reflected their lamplight, and the things’ forms were becoming visible – lumpy, misshapen blobs of hairless flesh, all mouth and teeth, with spindly, taloned legs stuck on as if as an afterthought. They were possibly the most hideous things Felix had ever seen, and he had seen his share of horrors.
‘Brace yourselves,’ said Hamnir, unnecessarily.
‘Guess we’ll die in the Duk after all,’ said Ragar.
‘Always thought I would,’ said Karl.
‘See you in Grimnir’s halls, brothers,’ said Arn.
‘Look out below!’ roared Gotrek from above them.
There was a low tung, as if someone had plucked the string of a bass viol, and then suddenly the shaft was filled with a deafening, screaming, scraping cacophony.
Felix looked up, and then hugged the ladder as tightly as he could. The dwarfs did the same. With a rush of wind and a screeching of steel on stone, the lift carriage plummeted down towards them, then past them, tilting and disintegrating as it went, its tumbling struts and timbers carving deep white gouges in the walls of the shaft.
Felix looked down, following its passage, and caught just a glimpse of the squigs, eyes wide with fright, bullfrog mouths agape, before it smashed down on them and dropped into darkness, roaring as it went.
After what seemed an interminable wait, they heard a thunderous, wall-shaking boom as the carriage at last hit bottom.
‘All clear?’ came Gotrek’s voice from above.
‘Nearly,’ called Leatherbeard.
Some squigs still scrabbled up the ladder, undaunted by the fate of their fellows, their teeth gnashing for a taste of dwarf flesh. Held in place by his belt, the masked Slayer waited for them, his two axes ready. They leapt up at him, howling w
ith hunger. He chopped down furiously, catching one between the eyes, severing another’s foreleg. They tumbled away, knocking others off as they fell, but not all. Leatherbeard slashed into the next wave. Thorgig and Narin fired crossbows over his shoulders. The other dwarfs grunted, frustrated that the narrowness of the ladder wouldn’t allow them to get into the fight. Felix was content to watch.
At last, just as Gotrek reappeared above them, the fight was over. The last of the squigs spun squealing down into darkness, trailing a swash of black blood, and Leatherbeard hung, breathing heavily, from his belt.
‘Well done, Leatherbeard,’ said Hamnir.
‘Bravely fought,’ agreed Narin.
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘Good work, squigslayer.’
Leatherbeard growled as he cleaned his axes and freed himself from the ladder. ‘Not all of us have been fortunate enough to meet a daemon. I’ll get my chance.’
‘Not if you travel with Gurnisson,’ said Hamnir. ‘He may insist on a strict division of spoils, but he takes all the glory for himself.’ He looked up. ‘Isn’t that right, Jaeger?’
Felix opened his mouth, and closed it again. He wanted to deny Hamnir’s words, but couldn’t quite. Gotrek was certainly always the one out in front when there was trouble, and it wasn’t Felix that was called upon to retake holds or venture into uncharted lands. Of course, that was because Gotrek could do these things. He wasn’t taking any opportunities from Felix. Felix would have died in seconds up against that daemon.
‘Leave the manling out of this!’ said Gotrek. ‘Now let’s get on!’
The dwarfs sheathed their weapons and continued down the ladder. They passed another seven levels before they saw the wreckage of the lift carriage glinting below them at the bottom of the shaft – a shattered pile of splintered wood and twisted metal, mixed in with mashed squigs and bleached bones that proved the hideous beasts were not the first living things to fall down the pit.
The party picked their way over the mess and stepped out of the shaft into a low mine tunnel, much rougher hewn than those in the highest levels, but still neatly cut and well braced, if a bit short.
