by Warhammer
‘Not myself, not these last few years, but my old uncle Tobrin came back just yesterday after being up the watchtowers there. There’s folks on the move, coming south.’
‘Probably the last few survivors of Karak Ungor,’ said Nakka. There was a moment’s silence in contemplation of the loss of the ancient hold, which had been overrun by greenskins a little over a year before. Haldora, like so many others, had hardly been able to believe the news when it had come. The ancient defences broken by earthquakes, Karak Ungor had been ill-prepared for a sudden onslaught of orcs and goblins. It made her shudder just to think of the barbaric greenskins plundering and slaughtering through a dwarf city.
‘It’ll never happen here,’ said Nakka, reaching across to lay a reassuring hand on her arm. ‘No earthquakes in the Dragonbacks, and our towers and walls are as strong as the day they were raised.’
‘Not Karak Ungor,’ said the Skeldram ranger. A couple of the surrounding tables had overheard him and fell silent to listen to his news. Elsewhere was the constant mumble and laughter of dwarfs making good acquaintance with the offspring of barley and hops. ‘These were folk of Karak Varn.’
‘Karak Varn?’ Skraffi shook his head. ‘No, it can’t be.’
‘We all knew they’d suffered bad,’ said Fleinn. ‘Whole deeps flooded when the mountains cracked and let in the floods from the Black Water.’
‘As you say,’ said Njellon. ‘Ratmen from below and goblins from above. Almost wiped out the Varnfolk. Tobrin spoke to one of the thanes himself, to find out what happened. Some are hoping to find shelter in Barak Varr, but I think there’s a clan or two wanting to get further away who will be heading here soon enough.’
‘They’ll be safe,’ said Gabbik. ‘The more hands to the workings, the better. Just as long as no Old Hold thanes think they can come here and start putting on with talk of bloodlines and princedoms. That’s elf-nonsense if you ask me.’ There were grunts and grumbles of assent. ‘They can get their hands dirty and earn their grit like any other.’
‘Two holds fallen in as many years, goblin numbers on the rise,’ said Skraffi. ‘Mark me, we haven’t heard the last of this.’
‘It’s a long trek for a goblin, from the old mountains to Dragonback,’ said Gabbik. ‘You see a goblin and cry troll!’
‘Maybe you think that mead of yours will prove too much of a lure, eh?’ said Nakka. ‘They’ll be coming in droves across the wasteland to get it?’
Skraffi said something unintelligible and upended his jug to pour out the last of the mead.
‘Since Ekrund was first founded the orcs have tried to attack,’ said Fleinn. ‘Even when we was busy bloodying elf noses we managed to keep them out.’ He looked to Njellon. ‘You’ve been up there. Old High King Snorri Whitebeard cleared out the orcs long ago and we’ve been stamping on them ever since, right? A tribe here and there, the odd ambush of a trade wagon. It’s a long toss from that to Ekrund being attacked.’
‘Yeah, right enough,’ said the ranger. ‘I could walk from here to Blood River and never see a patch of green skin. If anything there’s even less orcs around since last winter than ever before.’
‘And those gobbos might have snuck in this time but we showed them good and proper,’ said Nakka. ‘There’s a hundred-odd grobi won’t be coming back, right?’
‘And the Thramptons cleared out another lair not so long ago, almost twice that number.’ Gabbik took a drink and wiped beer from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘There’s more chance of King Erstukar shaving his chin and calling himself Caledor the Third than there is of the goblins doing any real damage, with all respect to them that was bidden to the Halls of the Ancestors today.’
‘May their shades drink deep and eat hearty,’ said Haldora, lifting her tankard, eliciting a chorus from the others. ‘And if the orcs do come, there’s a wall of axes waiting for them.’
‘And hammers,’ said Gabbik.
‘And catapults,’ added Vifi.
‘Not to mention stone chuckers, bolt throwers, fire bombs and no small number of rune-traps,’ said Nakka.
‘And my swords!’ declared Fleinn with a grin.
‘The ancients protect us,’ muttered Skraffi.
‘You’re in a sour mood,’ said Fleinn. ‘And it’s not just because nobody’s interested in your bee-piddle.’
A growl rumbled deep in Skraffi’s chest as he glowered at the other dwarfs around the table. He reached down and lifted another ewer of mead from the floor to pour himself a fresh fill.
‘I’m old,’ Skraffi said. ‘Nearly five hundred years have been and gone since my first breath. But even I don’t remember the time before the war with the elves. My pa did, though. He died before the fighting was over, but he told me enough to know what’s what and when’s when. He was there to see me right with axeplay, and when he died I renamed his axe Elfslicer and had Ketlin Dourforge strike a rune upon its head to avenge my murdered father.’ He looked right at Haldora. ‘I’m tired of fighting. Seems we’ve barely had time to take a breath since the elves ran away, and now there’s you young folk all stirred up and ready to battle with the orcs and goblins and other dark things that hide out there.’
‘Nobody’s talking about starting another war, Skraffi,’ said Nakka. ‘That’s the last thing anybody wants. But if goblins come and orcs want to have a go, we’re more than ready.’
‘But we ain’t, is we?’ Haldora was struck by the vehemence in Skraffi’s demeanour. His yellowing teeth were gritted, beard bristling, creased brow furrowed deeply. ‘Goblins breaking in and killing folks while they’re mining? It shouldn’t happen. And those orcs, the ones that took Karak Ungor? Are they gonna stay put in their new home, living it up with all that treasure? Or are they gonna want more? Them goblins in Karak Varn, and the rat-things too, are they just going to have a big celebration for the next hundred years?’
He stood up, taking his jug of mead in one hand, cup in the other. His shout for attention was like a stone cast into a pool as a ripple of silence spread out across the brew hall. Haldora caught a few muttered jibes and some laughter as the outsiders speculated what ‘mad old Skraffi Angbok’ was going to do next.
‘I know you think me an old stupid wazzock,’ Skraffi began, slowly turning in a circle to survey all within the drinking chamber.
Fulnir, one of Skraffi’s few surviving contemporaries, leaned over the bar between two large kegs of ale and nodded vigorously. ‘You was a young stupid wazzock too!’ he called out, bringing forth a brief grin from Skraffi.
‘Who is the wiser wazzock, my friend? The wazzock or the wazzock that follows a wazzock?’ Skraffi closed his eyes for a moment and wavered, gently swaying. It was only then that Haldora realised just how into his cups he was.
‘Do something,’ she whispered, leaning in close to her father. ‘That mead’s stronger than any ale and he’s had a pail-full.’
‘Let him be, he’s old enough to know his mind,’ Gabbik replied.
‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ said Haldora as a chorus of shushing surrounded her from the rest of the table.
‘Get on with it!’ someone called out from the crowd.
‘That’s jus’ the problem, ain’t it now?’ said Skraffi. ‘We’s all getting on with it, ain’t we? Busy as bee-bees just buzzing away beating about our buzziness… um, business. Not looking up, not seeing what’s happening. Did you hear?’ Mead sloshed from the ewer as Skraffi threw a hand towards Njellon. ‘Karak Varn is no more!’
The whispers and chuckles stopped; in their place grumbles and growls and a few moans of denial. The ranger reluctantly nodded and there were more groans.
‘And we lost good dwarfs today. Diligent hard-working lads you’d be happy to share a seam and an ale with.’
‘May Valaya guide them to the halls,’ someone called out, and this was repeated earnestly around the brew hall. Skraffi took another swig of mead, direct from the jug.
‘And Grimnir sharpen their axes,’ Skraffi added darkl
y, peering at the groups around each table. His eyes met Haldora’s and she smiled weakly, but her grandfather’s expression stayed grim. ‘You want to be like Gramma Awdie, my lovely Haldi?’
‘Haldora,’ she replied, infuriated that she had been brought into this display.
‘She was great because she looked further than the rest of us. She saw what’s what and when’s when, and if she were here now she’d be telling us the same. I’m not half as wise as she was…’
‘Nor half as handsome!’ shouted Fleinn.
‘…but I can smell tunnel-fume and know when not to be striking matches. There’s fume aplenty these days. A big cloud of it, rolling down the old mountains.’
‘That’s a long way away, you old drunkard!’ called out one of the Losthons.
The locals turned as one and glared their disapproval. Skraffi was certainly a batty old drunk, but the Angboks, Burlithroms, Grimssons and Troggklads were not going to let some stranger from the other side of the Third Deeps come to their halls and start throwing around insults. The interloper shrank behind his ale tankard, almost disappearing beneath the table to avoid the sudden scrutiny.
‘You’re barred.’
The two words were softly spoken by Fulnir but they carried across the hall as though bellowed. A tide of sharp intakes of breath and tutting followed, until the shame-faced dwarf rose from the bench and slunk away.
When the disgraced dwarf disappeared from view Skraffi looked around at his audience, one eye screwed up in concentration.
‘Wha’ was I sayin’?’
‘Mead!’ cried out Fleinn.
‘Tha’s right! Mead!’ A big grin split the old dwarf’s beard. ‘Stuff of the ancestors, believe me. You should all be drinking mead. It puts hairs on your chin and in your ears and up your nose and…’
He mumbled something else and started to teeter. Gabbik got up and offered up a shoulder for support but Skraffi waved his son away.
‘I miss your mam,’ Skraffi said loudly, in what he probably thought was a whisper. ‘Finest ladydwarf I ever knew.’
‘Let’s get back to the halls and we’ll raise another cup to her,’ said Haldora, slipping her arm around Skraffi.
Between them, Gabbik and Haldora led Skraffi to the door, with a few uncertain diversions around tables and sleeping dwarfs on the way. When they reached the doorway Skraffi forced them to turn around so that he could see his audience once more.
The other dwarfs were keen to show appreciation of the things they liked, and one of the things they really liked was another dwarf being entertaining whilst far drunker than them. Somebody started clapping and soon the whole throng had taken up the applause, and then they started stamping their feet and banging the tables with their tankards.
Skraffi bowed to acknowledge his admirers, waving his mead jug. As he straightened he lost his balance and continued backwards, until he had toppled to the floor. Haldora bent over her grandfather in concern, but already the sound of gentle snoring rose to her ears.
She exchanged a wordless look with her father and they hauled Skraffi up between them. Haldora remembered just in time to wave goodbye to Nakka, who gave her a wink and a thumbs up in reply.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Although the Angboks were the instigators of this endeavour, there were other clans who had listened to their plans and joined them in their westward move. The Troggklads, for one, were always staunch friends, and many were cousins to the Angboks. The Grimssons were also one of the first clans to leave Karak Eight Peaks, though they were less fondly considered from time to time.
Each clan had its thanes, and the thanes looked to their own for leadership, but it soon became clear that the whole expedition needed someone in charge. We like to know who to blame when things go wrong, for a start.
The Angboks thought that they were the obvious choice, having started everything. But the Grimssons conspired against them with some of the other clans, and despite the wishes of the Angboks and the Troggklads, a thane was chosen from the Brikboks. That family were put in charge and renamed themselves the Rinkeldraz, taking to themselves an air of royalty.
The Angboks, not wishing to upset the expedition on which they had set their hearts, agreed to abide by the commands of Thane Rinkeldraz for the time being, and all was well again.’
Over the days that followed Njellon Skeldram’s story was bolstered by news from other rangers: Karak Varn was no more. It was the topic of much conversation in the family chambers, in the mines and in the brew halls. When Skraffi asked Haldora for help bringing in the next batch of honey from the hives, it was an inevitable subject and reared its head just as they left by one of the minor gates.
The sun in the mountains was glorious, bathing the slopes in summer warmth, lighting the great ancestor faces carved into the cliff face over the gatehouse and striking fire in the seven immense rubies set into the archway above the open gates. In the past they had blazed with runelight in the night to guide travellers to the hold but since the war with the elves they had been dormant.
Though a subterranean people, quite capable of spending day after day underground without issue, the Ekrundfolk still had a fondness for light. Great shafts were dug into the mountainside to let starlight and sunlight into the lower deeps, while crystal-windowed galleries broke the slopes of the highest peaks around Ekrund, where dwarfs could walk and sit and gaze out at the world. Lamplight was much desired, and rune lamps that glowed with the captured dusk or dawn were highly sought after – most had been sent in trade to the elves on Ulthuan before the war had severed such ties and twilit lanterns were now a much-prized rarity. Firelight was perhaps most value, for it reminded the dwarfs of furnaces and forges, and the fires consumed their labours in the mines and in the forests and smelted good metal from rock and turned waste into warmth.
The heat of the sun on Haldora’s face was something she had always liked and she only half-listened to her grandfather’s laments about Karak Varn as they made their way up the flagged road heading towards the upper meadows where Skraffi’s apiary was located. Instead of paying attention she was wondering what it would be like to be a ranger, spending as much time above ground as under it, seeing distant shores and hillsides and visiting the Old Holds.
The road they followed cut as straight as an engineer’s rule to the south, with several smaller cobbled tracks leading off to outer towers, scenic spots and the goat pastures. The sides of the road were lined with walls thrice the height of a dwarf, holding back turfed embankments filled with beds of strong-smelling herbs. Young beardlings moved along the rows picking and plucking, filling the baskets on their backs. Haldora had done the same when she was young – though she had tended the cabbage patches by the south-western galleries – and it brought to mind not just the long summer days picking out weeds but also the colder autumn days when the winds turned eastwards and brought flurries of rain and sleet. She had not enjoyed that so much, and decided that perhaps being a ranger, slogging over mountain passes in the depths of winter and crossing the wildlands to the south and east during storms and floods, was not the life for her.
Skraffi was chuntering away happily, not the least bit perturbed by Haldora’s absence of interest. She suspected that he would have been saying much the same had she not been there and that she had been brought along simply for her presence rather than to provide any labour or physical assistance. He had moved on to discussing his bees, which he often did at great length, and complaining that in the last year their numbers had dwindled. A third of the hives had died out over the winter and Skraffi was laying the blame for this on the goblins, though he was somewhat uncertain on the exact process by which encroaching greenskins could affect such catastrophes on the bee colonies.
They turned off the main road and ascended a long, shallow set of stairs winding left and right up the mountainside. In places it was almost flat, where terraces had been dug. Some of the levels housed peat burners – the peat brought up from the boglands far to the sou
th – others kilns and a few were set aside for cultivating berries and root vegetables.
The two dwarfs reached the top of the mountain shoulder shortly before midday. They took a short break to rest here, looking down the valley road all the way to the wildlands. Here and there the grey stone of the outer keeps and ranger stations broke the rolling hills, and the road continued, only changing course near the foot of Mount Bloodhorn, to swing east before, out of sight, it curved along the Blind River heading towards Karak Izril.
Haldora took off her pack and sat down on a stone, moulded by generations of dwarfs doing the same over preceding centuries. Skraffi stood for a little while longer, gazing out to the east. It was there that Karak Eight Peaks was found, and Karak Azul also. It heartened Haldora to think that she shared the same ancestors as the dwarfs of those great holds. Sometimes it seemed as though Ekrund was on its own, stuck far away in a forgotten corner. Haldora had always thought of the earlier settlers in the Dragonback Mountains as explorers and adventurers, but now that she thought about it perhaps they had been isolationists, seeking somewhere away from the old lands where they would not be disturbed. That certainly explained why, to Haldora’s eye at least, the older folk of Ekrund seemed far more resistant to change and new ideas than she ever imagined the dwarfs of the old mountains could be.
There was a trace of a grey smudge on the horizon, barely visible. Haldora thought it was a storm cloud but Skraffi noticed it too and set her straight.
‘Karag Haraz is blowing again,’ he said, referring to the immense volcano that reared up in the heart of the old mountains, only a few days’ march from Karak Eight Peaks. ‘He’s been rumbling and belching ever since the great quakes came but that looks like a big one. I hope it bodes nothing bad for those folks.’
‘They’ve been living in the shadow of Karag Haraz forever, Grammi, I don’t think it’s going to cause them trouble now.’
