by Warhammer
The other dwarf reappeared a few moments later and gave a thumbs up. He hunkered down in the curve of the tunnel, dragging the corpse around the bend, while Gabbik and Vifi advanced to join him.
Coming around the bend, Gabbik was afforded a view down the tunnel through an opening that quickly widened into another cavern. As far as he could judge this was even larger than the last one, lit by flames and filled with smoke from more than one fire. He couldn’t see much of the goblins themselves, but their jerky shadows played across the wall of the tunnel. There were a handful more of the small greenskins right at the tunnel mouth. Gabbik assumed they were meant to be keeping watch, but their attention had been drawn to the fun being had inside the cave.
Vifi raised his catapult but Gabbik laid his hand on the younger dwarf’s arm and shook his head. He gestured back down the tunnel. Horgir set off with Vifi close behind. Gabbik stayed for a little while longer trying to guess the number of goblins, but it was impossible to tell; they were moving around so much and dancing that it could have been a dozen or a gross.
Irritated that he did not have more to take back to Stofrik, Gabbik was tempted to try to get a little closer. Then his own words about rashness came back to him and he changed his mind, turning back down the tunnel towards the others.
He knew that he was regarded by some of the other Angboks as the simple, sensible one of the clan, but he didn’t mind at all. Those that mattered – the king and the thanes of other clans – respected the Angboks because of Gabbik’s calm temperament and predictability. Being dependable was a virtue to be coveted. It was a cool manner and steady hand that had guided the Angboks through the tough times since Awdhelga’s death and it would be the same – and a seam of gold! – that would continue to steer the clan to new heights of security and prosperity.
Gabbik thought about his father as he returned to the main group, wishing that Skraffi had been more responsible since Awdhelga had passed into the Halls of the Ancestors. Instead Gabbik had been left to shoulder the burden of heading the family alone. Friedra was a great support – diligent in her attention to domestic matters but rarely concerned with wider clan goings-on – but Haldora was becoming more and more like her grandmother, and that meant trouble ahead.
He thought of the way the Burlithroms and Grimssons had listened to Stofrik without question and wished he commanded such respect. There was no reason he should not. He was thane, and Vice-Treasurer of the Ekrund Miners’ Welfare and Social Society – soon to be Treasurer Elect after the next quarterly general assembly, he hoped – and not short of years. There was just something in the Angbok bloodline that made them a bit mouthy and defiant, even amongst themselves and even when others were looking.
With such despondent thoughts, Gabbik reached the other cave to find that Vifi and Horgir had brought the rest of the dwarfs to the tunnel entrance. He exchanged a glance with Stofrik, sharing a moment in which they both acknowledged the fight about to come and the possible consequences. Gabbik was no war leader, but he had been on his fair share of goblin hunts.
‘Let’s do this,’ he said. A few of the Angboks and Troggklads started forward and then faltered as the rest of the dwarfs stayed where they were.
‘For Thorek,’ said Stofrik, eliciting grunts and nods of acknowledgement from his clansdwarfs. They surged up towards the tunnel, almost pushing aside Gabbik.
‘Don’t fret, lad.’ Skraffi gave Gabbik an encouraging nudge with his elbow as he came down the sloped tunnel entrance. ‘It’s their dwarf in there; they’re looking to each other is all. We’re not here to make names for ourselves, just to get Thorek out.’
Gabbik nodded and led his contingent after the Grimssons and Burlithroms with a lighter heart than a moment earlier. Sometimes, despite all of his vices and shortcomings, Skraffi knew just the right thing to say.
Now that their ire had been roused and the call to battle had been made – albeit softly spoken at the time – the dwarfs boiled along the tunnel accompanied by a grumbling and swearing akin to the growing noise of a rockfall that starts with a few pebbles rattling and ends with thunderous destruction.
The din of the dwarfs’ progress made no difference – the goblins guarding the approach heard nothing over the clamour of their own kind until the first of the Grimssons and Burlithroms were round the bend and heading right at them. Slingstones and catapult bullets whirred along the tunnel, felling half the sentries before they had turned their heads. The warning squawks and shrieks of the survivors were lost amidst the strident celebrations going on in the chamber beyond them.
Bursting into the main chamber with the others, Gabbik found himself in a huge cavern almost as large as the Grand Hall of Ekrund, though the ceiling was far lower. Limestone columns linked rocky floor and ceiling, and the walls were lined with mineral deposits that glittered in the light of two immense fires.
The chamber seethed with goblins – a mass of greenskins hooded and cloaked in black, all squirming and pushing in a crowd around a bloodied figure tied to a frame between the fires – Thorek. Gabbik had no time for further exploration as the goblins reacted to the death cries of the sentries and turned towards the dwarfs.
Red eyes gleamed and dozens of wickedly serrated and curved blades glittered as the grobi pulled out their knives and swords; fangs were bared, and snarls and screeches of hatred issued from the crowd. There were probably a hundred goblins, perhaps more. The dwarfs halted their charge as the last of them surged into the cavern. Stofrik was calling his clansdwarfs to order and Gabbik followed, shouting for the Angboks and Troggklads to form a line. The oldest dwarfs fell into place quickly, the younger ones forming ranks behind them as the green-skinned horde poured out from the light of the fires towards them.
Arrows cut through the fire gleam, loosed by goblins with short bows sneaking between the rock columns. Here and there a crossbow twanged in reply. Skraffi readied a throwing axe to Gabbik’s right while Vifi and others unleashed lead from their catapults and the air buzzed with slingshot. Snarling and yapping, the goblins came on, a sea of green and black in the orange glow.
When the goblins were no more than twenty paces away Skraffi hurled the first of his throwing axes. Its blade caught the light as it spun end-over-end and disappeared beneath the hood of an oncoming greenskin. The goblin was thrown into the creature behind by the force of the impact and several more tripped over the corpses in their mad dash to attack. The old dwarf’s second axe buried in the chest of another goblin, causing similar chaos amongst the green-skinned mob.
Small black-swathed bodies littered the rocky floor but the goblins were incensed by the intrusion into their lair and for the moment their loathing of the dwarfs and spitefulness overcame their natural timidity.
‘For Thorek!’
The call rippled along the line from the Burlithroms. Gabbik joined the chorus of shouts and raised his hammer in challenge to the oncoming goblins.
Shrieking and spitting, the first greenskins reached the dwarf line, stabbing and lashing with their blades. Gabbik caught a short sword with the rim of his shield and then slammed his hammer into the skull of the creature wielding it. A spiked maul careened from Gabbik’s shield boss a moment later as another goblin leapt over the falling body, only for the greenskin to be smashed sideways by a hammer blow from Gordrik, standing to the thane’s left.
Everything quickly descended into a whirl of snapping fangs, glaring red eyes and splashing blood. Gabbik took not one step forward, but shuffled to left and right as needed to block attacks with his shield or swing his hammer in reply. Claws skittered from armour, and now and then he heard the gruff shout of a wounded dwarf near at hand – painful injuries indeed to make a dwarf give voice.
As he crushed the chest of a goblin it slashed out in its death throes, the tip of its barbed dagger cutting a slice across Gabbik’s beard. He bit back a shout of alarm as a frond of black hair fell away, harder to bear than any cut upon skin.
The first onslaught of the goblins
quickly petered out. Dwarfs from behind quickly stepped up to fill the gaps left by those few Ekrundfolk who succumbed to the enemy’s weight of numbers. With the ends of the dwarf line up against the walls of the cavern, there was little room for the greenskins to press their numerical advantage, and head-to-head every dwarf on the shieldwall was more than a match for a dozen goblins. Arrows continued to flit down as the goblins pulled back, bouncing from the dwarf line like a wave receding after crashing against a cliff.
‘After them!’ bellowed Stofrik, pursuing the retreating goblins at the head of a wedge of Grimssons. The goblins fell back further as the vengeful dwarfs speared towards the fires and Thorek.
‘Hold the flank!’ Gabbik told his warriors, seeing that twenty or thirty goblins had peeled away to the left and in the shadows were regrouping for another attack. ‘Stand your ground, Angboks!’
The retreat of the goblins turned to a rout, most of them turning their backs on the dwarfs to run headlong from their foes. Fortunately they were met by Fleinn and his small company arriving on the other side of the cavern.
The greenskins on the left surged back at the dwarfs, heading directly for Stofrik’s band of warriors. Gabbik shouted a warning and led the Angboks forward to counter the attack. Broken by the pillars, the formation of the dwarfs disappeared and they went after the grobi in small groups of three and four. The greenskins were running in circles almost, trying to escape Fleinn’s flanking group and then turned away from Stofrik’s advance by the charge of Gabbik and his clan-fellows.
Noticing a gap at his shoulder where Skraffi should have been, Gabbik stopped and looked around for his father. Skraffi was leaning against one of the rock columns a dozen paces behind, almost double over, one hand gripping his thigh.
‘Are you hurt?’ Gabbik demanded, taking a few steps back towards his father.
‘Blumming cramp!’ Skraffi snarled back. ‘I’m getting too old to be chasing goblins. Get on with you, lad, and I’ll be as solid as silver soon enough.’
Gabbik lifted his hammer in acknowledgement and turned back to the chase. The nimblest goblins were slipping away, able to avoid the stouter dwarfs by clambering over rock piles and slipping between gaps in the columns too narrow for their foes. Gabbik could see the odd shadowy shape disappearing through the narrowest side tunnels.
For most the cavern became a tomb as the dwarfs gradually encircled the remaining goblins, who huddled together in the shadows while the grim-faced Ekrundfolk closed in. Gabbik found himself next to Stofrik.
‘Thorek? Is he all right?’
‘What?’ Stofrik was intent upon the goblins. His beard was matted and filthy with grobi blood and there were fresh dents and scratches on his helm. ‘I think so. Physically, anyway. A few cuts and bruises.’ Stofrik’s expression darkened. ‘They cut his beard though. Nearly all of it gone.’
Gabbik’s stomach lurched at the thought and his hand instinctively strayed to the lopped portion of his own chin hair. The idea of losing all of it… Again, Gabbik fought down the urge to throw up.
‘We’ll make these beggars pay for that,’ he managed to say, flexing his grip on his weapon as the ring of dwarf axes and hammers closed on the terrified goblins.
And they did.
CHAPTER THREE
‘One thing that the Angboks had in their favour when they set out to find their new land was their experience as brewers. Though they had been miners in recent generations, the clan name had been founded on a reputation for knowing a good malt and for growing the best beer barley in the southern mountains. According to my old granddad, the Angboks learnt brewing and mining from Grungni himself, and in those days there was few folk that’d argue with such.
Amongst their wagons, the Angboks had a great many barrels and copper vats and pipes and other such workings as is needed for the making of good beer. They hoped to find gromril or gold in the mountains to the west but knew that as long as they could sow some seed for a season their beer would keep them going, both to drink and for sale.’
Fulnir’s brew hall, while always home to no fewer than twenty dwarfs at any given time, was thronged with patrons. News of the goblin hunt had spread to some of the other clans, so as well as Angboks, Troggklads, Grimssons and Burlithroms there were attendants from the Narjaks, Losthons, Skurllissons and even some visitors from further afield.
The mood was a strange mix of sombre remembrance for the dwarfs that had been slain by the goblin ambush and the three more that had succumbed to wounds suffered during the dwarf raid on the invaders’ lair, and an overall air of celebration for an expedition that had been very successful, those losses notwithstanding.
Thorek was ‘indisposed’, however, and had been taken to the temple of Valaya in the main halls of Ekrund, where his physical hurt might be healed and he could also receive assistance in coming to terms with his stubbling at the hands of the goblins. There was unspoken agreement amongst the brew hall’s attendees not to mention this personal disaster, and glasses were raised to toast Thorek’s safe return in his absence.
Haldora found herself with some of her family, including Nakka, Fleinn and a handful of dwarfs from the Narjaks, Thornsons and Skeldrams. Skraffi had fetched Friedra from the Angbok kitchens – Awdhelga’s kuri would not see a bowl until much later this night – but the company were already three pints into their celebrations and mourning before Gabbik arrived.
‘What sorely pressing business kept so fierce a lord from taking his beer?’ asked Fleinn, pushing a flagon of ale in front of Gabbik as he sat down next to Haldora.
‘Tallying grobi ears,’ Gabbik replied with a sigh. ‘One hundred and seventeen greenskins killed.’
‘And long may they rot!’ declared Fleinn, raising his tankard.
The others echoed the toast and drank deep, but Skraffi was half-hearted in his response.
‘One hundred and seventeen less goblins in the world is a good thing, isn’t it?’ asked Haldora. ‘It is a shame that we lost some of our own, but we are safe again.’
‘How did nobody notice so many goblins?’ asked Skraffi. ‘How did so many get so close to the tunnels?’
‘These things happen,’ said Gabbik. ‘For as long as we’ve been in Dragonback we’ve had to put up with goblin raids.’
‘We can’t keep watch everywhere,’ said Nakka. ‘Seems they were quiet as mice, real sneaky beggars this time.’
‘In the old days we had patrols,’ said Skraffi, unconvinced. He filled his stein with mead from a jug and presented the ewer to the table. Nobody took up his offer.
‘In the old days we didn’t have the Miners’ Society pushing us for every fistful of ore,’ Fleinn said, looking sideways at Gabbik. ‘Was a time when a dwarf could spend a while checking for cracks and goblin spoor.’
‘And there was a time when we had the hands to spare,’ Gabbik replied with a surly look. ‘Before the war.’
He didn’t need to spell it out further. Though Ekrund itself and the mines of Dragonback had emerged relatively unscathed from five hundred years of conflict with the elves, the same could not be said for the clans. Thousands had died and sixty years was far too short a time for such losses to be replaced. Never a prolific race, the dwarfs would need generations more before their numbers were restored.
Haldora felt eyes on her as the others at the table followed this line of thought.
‘What?’ she demanded. ‘You want me to start popping out youngsters right this moment?’
There were a few nods, some grumbles and a strange look came into Nakka’s eye.
‘We could,’ he said. He glanced at Skraffi and then Gabbik. ‘You know, after due ceremony and such.’
‘I’ve told you before, I’ll not be making bonds with no one until I’ve made something of myself.’ She turned on Gabbik. ‘I should have been with you, killing grobi. Like you say, there’s not so many of us now that we can spare a well-handled axe in a fight.’
‘And I say that killing a few goblins is the last of your c
oncerns,’ said Gabbik. He frowned and downed a great draught of beer. ‘You think we’ll return to our glory days without youngsters? Now more than ever we need the womenfolk to be raising strong sons and daughters.’
‘I’m just meant to make little babes, is that it?’ Haldora was infuriated by the suggestion. ‘Never mind what else I might be able to do.’
‘Listen to your father,’ said Fleinn. ‘Nobody’s saying that that’s all that you can do, but sure as gold glitters and the treachery of elves, there’s one thing you can do that none of the rest of us can.’
‘But it’s not fair!’ Haldora knew it was a shallow argument and felt a flush of shame immediately the childish outburst left her lips. She hid her embarrassment by downing the contents of her tankard, glad to look elsewhere as she fetched the pitcher of beer from in front of Gabbik.
‘To Grimnir and his blessing falling upon the necks of many more grobi!’ declared one of the outsiders in the uncomfortable silence that followed. The dwarfs echoed the toast.
‘I still say it’s a bad sign,’ said Skraffi when the customary chorus of roars and cheers were done. ‘It shows the goblins are getting bolder. Never mind patrols or keeping watch, we need to have a proper effort to clear out those caves. Three years ago we found them and still there hasn’t been a full mapping expedition.’
‘Who has the time?’ said Gabbik. ‘The prospectors haven’t, and the rangers are too busy keeping up with goings-on in the old mountain holds. Only a few days ago I heard that there’d been another earthquake, and volcanoes have been erupting all around Karaz-a-Karak and Eight Peaks.’
‘Trolls have been on the move again, so I heard,’ said Njellon, one of the Skeldrams. Haldora hadn’t paid him much attention when he had sat down, but now she saw that he wore a much-darned, patched and travel-stained dark green cloak and hood, and had the look of a ranger about him.
‘You’ve been up to the Varag Kadrin?’ she asked. She had never been out of the Dragonbacks herself, and tales from the Old Holds and the Worlds Edge Mountains always seemed exotic and romantic.
