by Warhammer
‘Sorry, dear,’ said Friedra, ‘it’s just your father going on. There isn’t any rat milk, I’m afraid.’
Haldora slipped back into her semi-comatose state, eyes fixed on the cooking rat. Her jaw slowly worked and there was a piece of leather sticking out of her mouth – Haldora had taken to chewing a piece of belt-strip to keep herself from feeling empty.
Friedra was in remarkably good spirits. Like all the womenfolk she had been tested, forced to fight when the orcs broke through – there was little in the world more fierce than an Ekrund-maid fighting to protect her loved ones and home. She darned and scavenged and had even learnt a little metalcraft to fix the rings of their mail and reset the heads on their weapons.
‘You are an inspiration,’ he told her quietly.
‘That’s nice, dear,’ she replied, returning her attention to patching a pair of red-and-black checked trousers. Gabbik vaguely remembered seeing them on a dead body at the arch of the upper tunnels to the Third Deep, but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t ask Friedra where she managed to find so many raw materials and she wasn’t going to volunteer the information any time soon.
A shout echoed down the tunnel some distance away. None of them paid it much heed – there was always some ruckus or other these days. They were off-shift, and that was all that mattered. Gabbik gave the rat an experimental prod with his knife.
‘A little bit longer, nobody wants the squits from half-cooked rat.’
The call was repeated, coming closer. This time they could make out the words. Almost instantly they were all alert, Angboks, Troggklads and even a few Nordekkers and Thornsons on their feet. Metal scraped on leather and wood as weapons were readied.
Nakka ran to the door and took up the call, raising the alarm for those further down the tunnel.
‘Goblins in the deeps! Bear arms! Night goblins in the deeps! Bear arms!’
It had been a matter of little remark that the goblins that had occasionally pestered Ekrund with their raids had not made an appearance since the start of the siege. At the outset patrols had been sent into the mines to watch for any sign of encroachment. Of late such diligence had been impossible. Every dwarf was needed for the gatehouse and to defend the inner portals against the orcs and goblins in the workings that had fallen.
The night goblins had been patient, and they had amassed their strength. Several thousand of them poured up from several mine workings, converging on the upper halls in black-robed waves. The dwarfs knew better than to throw themselves piecemeal against such an attack and the command came from the king for the Ekrundthrong to muster in the Hall of Eighty Pillars.
The massive chamber was pragmatically named for the eighty vast columns that held up its high ceiling, each pillar nearly thirty times the height of a dwarf. The hall had once been a natural pocket in the mountain, and had been mined and later shaped by masons into an octagonal space a little less than six hundred paces across. Each of the eight walls was broken by a tall archway. It served as a cross-road of sorts, between the Rinkeldraz chambers, the Central Hall and two tunnels down to the mine workings.
The Angboks arrived from the western side of the hall. There were, at most, two thousand dwarfs present, all that could be spared from the defence of the upper reaches being assailed by the orcs. They were quickly marshalled by Prince Rodri into a fighting line between a company of crossbow dwarfs and a fearsome band of Trollslayers. Haldora had not really paid much heed to the Slayers before. She had heard what had happened to her father at the king’s council, and that several more of the Cult of Grimnir had arrived soon after, but now there were thirty or forty of them.
She sidled over towards the outlandish warriors and waved at the nearest.
‘Hsst! Hey, you!’
The Slayer turned, his high orange crest as stiff as a fence, the rest of his scalp dappled with undyed stubble. His face was little more than a red-dyed beard and a pair of eyes, everything else was scar tissue and the mashed remnants of a nose. Haldora couldn’t imagine an uglier dwarf, and she had once met Norgamm ‘Ogre Face’ Hastengrom.
‘Milady?’ the Slayer said, in a curiously aristocratic accent that took Haldora by surprise. She guessed he was from Karaz-a-Karak, the High King’s hold.
‘Where are you from?’ she asked. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘As to the first, I cannot say. My past is buried beneath my shame and I will not speak of it. As to the second question…’ The Slayer pointed a rune-decorated axe across the hall towards the corridors leading south. ‘I came to slay or be slain.’
‘How comes there’s so many of you?’
‘Ekrund is doomed,’ said the Slayer. ‘We were drawn here by the call of Grimnir to find our glorious deaths. Seven of the brotherhood have already been released from their guilty burden since the siege began.’
‘Just gobbos today, I think,’ Haldora said. She tried to look sympathetic. ‘I think it’ll mostly be slaying today, not slain.’
‘Perhaps,’ said the Slayer.
A shout of warning turned their attention across the hall. Haldora hurried back to her place between Skraffi and her father. She slipped her axe free from its sling and held her shield up to her chest. Gabbik spared her a glance.
‘Whatever comes up them tunnels, be ready for…’
His voice trailed off as something monstrous and red squeezed through one of the archways opposite. It was basically a huge sphere with a mouth and two legs. Its hide was scarlet, pocked and ridged like old leather armour. Two black, beady eyes glared at the dwarfs over a maw filled with sword-like fangs. A team of night goblins hurried past, dragging on chains hooked into its flesh. It stepped out into the hall, claws raking across the bare stone floor, prodded forward by more goblins with jagged goads.
Crossbows greeted the beast with a storm of bolts. Most clattered uselessly from its thick skin, two of the night goblins were felled and a handful of quarrels stuck in its flesh. Opening its mouth even wider, pink tongue lolling like a serpent, the monstrous cave-thing issued a weirdly high-pitched mewing.
Some of the dwarfs started to snigger. Haldora couldn’t help herself as a chuckle burst out. The laughter was infectious, spreading from one company to the next, until it seemed that the whole hall was filled with guffaws and sniggers.
A shadow blotted out the lanterns in the tunnel beside the cave-thing and the laughter started to subside. It fell silent as another monstrous beast, even larger than the first, heaved itself into view. The hysteria that had gripped the battle-mad dwarfs drained away, and Haldora cast a glance at the Slayer she had spoken to. He was talking excitedly with his companions, and they all seemed rather enthusiastic.
Another flurry of bolts sped between the columns. More night goblins emerged from the shadows, their hoods pulled up against the light of the lanterns, eyes glinting, teeth bared in snarls. Like oil spilling into a puddle, the black-clad wretches spread into the hall from three of the arches.
A whooping cry went up from the Slayers and they barrelled forwards, heedless of any battle plan. As a group they broke into a run, heading straight for the cave-beasts, brandishing axes and boasting to each other regarding who would ‘pop the great beastie’ first. There were shouts of annoyance from the crossbow dwarfs, whose aim the Slayers interrupted.
Haldora felt her confidence ebbing away as more and more night goblins arrived, filling the far side of the hall from one end to the other. Wicked blades glinted as the night goblins formed up around icons of beaten copper shaped like moons, and standards of poorly woven black cloth daubed with images of skulls and flames.
The clatter of metal on stone drew Haldora’s gaze to the left, where a group of ironbreakers filled the gap left by the Slayers’ wild charge. Each dwarf was clad toe-to-scalp in thick armour, forged of iron and hardest gromril, engraved with runes of warding and defiance. The ironbreakers were professional tunnel-fighters, employed to keep the mines clear of intruders such as the night goblins.
At their head stood E
rstukar Rinkeldraz.
‘Look, the king,’ whispered Haldora. Others murmured about this auspicious occurrence. The king had been fighting as hard as any dwarf, but it had always seemed to be somewhere else on the walls or in the halls.
Haldora felt a nudge from her left.
‘Look who else is here,’ said Skraffi, nodding towards a company standing beneath a Clan Rinkeldraz banner. Next to the standard was Prince Horthrad, looking splendid in golden armour. He had no helm and his beard, though short with youth, was thick and bushy, his hair a wild mane around his face.
Sudden yells and war cries drew everyone back to the Slayers. The cave-creatures lunged in a counter-charge, crushing the half-naked dwarfs beneath clawed feet, stooping to sweep them up with their massive jaws. The Slayers would not die without a struggle, and even those being stepped on by the immense weight of the beasts continued to hew and hack with their axes until the life was squashed out of them. The others whirled about the massive creatures in a flurry of glinting runes and sharp iron, chopping at red flesh.
Haldora could not make out in the melee which of the Slayers she had spoken to – it was a scrum of orange hair and tattooed flesh. She saw one Slayer disappear into a beast’s mouth, taken whole. A few moments later the creature reared up as though stricken. Its jaw gaped and blood sprayed. The Slayer jumped out, axe in one hand, severed tongue in the other.
For all that they held a deathwish, the Slayers were dwarfs and no dwarf could purposefully go about a task without trying their utmost. So it was that although the doom-seeking sons of Grimnir wanted an end to their shame, they felt bidden to meet that doom against a worthy foe. They were well experienced at facing trolls, giants and all manner of monstrous opponents and the cave-things fared no better than most.
‘Push them back to the tunnels!’ the king announced, his command reverberating around the hall. He held aloft his axe and waved the line forward.
Crossbows heralded the dwarf attack, slashing into the front ranks of the goblins as the Ekrundthrong rumbled across the hall. Haldora was swept along with the rest of the Angboks, shoulder-to-shoulder with her family. It had been some time since she had considered battle a novelty, but this was the first time she had been forced to raise her axe within the halls themselves.
‘Killing blows, when you can,’ Gabbik told her.
‘Don’t break the line or you’ll get them at you from all sides,’ added Skraffi.
With these two pieces of tunnel fighting advice in her thoughts, she felt the others closing around her. The ironbreakers tightened their ranks and the Angboks’ company moved alongside, ensuring there was no gap between the formations for the goblins to exploit. Face-to-face, the night goblins would be no match for the solid wall of dwarf muscle and iron bearing down upon them.
The twang of bows greeted the dwarf advance. Haldora held up her shield, and around her the others did the same, presenting a barrier of metal and wood against the barbed shot that clattered around them. A dart glanced from her helm and another snapped on the rings of her mail, but she paid them no heed.
Peering over the top of her shield, presenting nothing but a pair of eyes between helmet brim and shield rim, Haldora could see the night goblins tussling and wrestling with each other. Some were trying to get away, others were pushing their cowardly companions to the front, trying to make sure they were not the first to receive the brunt of the dwarfs’ ire.
The dwarfs slowly picked up speed, like a boulder rolling down the flanks of Mount Bloodhorn. There was an impetus gathering, a momentum and weight that seemed implacable. Companies split from each other and then united again as they moved around the columns, not once faltering in stride. In places, thickets of spears of varying lengths erupted from the goblin ranks. Brash gongs and drums clanged and rolled, trying to keep up the spirits of the goblins and intimidate the dwarfs.
When the line was less than eighty paces from the goblins, Haldora noticed even more fervent struggling in their ranks. The cause for this was suddenly revealed as a handful of goblins broke from the mass, wailing and gnashing their teeth. She could see blood-specked spittle flying from their lips and their eyes were wide and staring. Each dragged after it a huge ball on a length of chain, some spiked, others smooth, of metal or stone. Gibbering and snorting, the manic goblins started to turn on the spot, pulling up the great weight of the balls, spinning faster and faster.
‘Fanatics!’ someone cried, and the dwarf line halted as one. ‘Crossbows!’
While space was made in the ranks for the crossbows to come forwards, the goblin fanatics continued their whirling, haphazardly approaching closer and closer to the dwarf line. Haldora watched one of the night goblins coming right at her, spinning so fast she felt dizzy just watching it.
Skraffi stepped forward and hurled a throwing axe. It clanged from the whirling ball, blade shattered, and the goblin came on, still picking up speed.
‘Hold the line.’ This came from Gabbik. Her father had his jaw set, eyes fixed on the madly whirling goblin. She wanted to step back or to the side, amazed that such a small creature could have the strength to lift such a large and obviously lethal sphere. Her father’s calm demeanour persuaded her otherwise.
At the last moment, when it was no more than ten paces away, the night goblin fanatic stumbled. The ball clanged from a pillar and the goblin veered off course, heading along the dwarf line rather than towards it. Another pillar proved even more of an obstacle as the night goblin spun right into its base, the metal ball bouncing up in the air and then down onto the goblin’s head, pulping it instantly.
Elsewhere, other dwarfs were not so lucky. The screech of tearing armour and the moans of the wounded, coupled with curses and crashes, marked where the fanatics ploughed into the dwarf companies. Against the impact nothing but rune armour was sure defence, and standing between the columns of the hall the dwarfs had no place to avoid the spinning maniacs.
Some of the fanatics simply collapsed out of exhaustion, others spun into each other while a few were eventually pinioned by the bolts of the crossbows. The night goblins charged in the wake of the fermented toadstool-fuelled ball-wielders, giving the dwarfs almost no time to re-form their ranks.
Haldora and the others took the charge with shields set side-by-side. Amongst the mass of spear and crooked blades, some of the night goblins flung nets of heavy rope, weighted with metal ingots and stones. These nets dragged on shield arms and wrapped around hammers and axes, and a few landed lucky blows, falling over heads or wrapping legs. The dwarfs around the netters’ victims did the best they could to drag their comrades free, but the night goblins were on them in moments, slashing, stabbing and clubbing with spiteful ferocity.
Haldora could bear little thought except for what was directly in front of her. She blocked and chopped methodically, all thought of the deadly dance Nakka had taught her ground out by days upon days of relentless fighting. She was hewing at foes, lost in the simple monotony of carving them down.
A shout from Gabbik warned her that all was not well. She glanced to her side to see her father struggling with a cord net entangling his shield, being dragged out of line by two leering goblins. Haldora smashed her shield into the face of a night goblin trying to skewer her with its spear and lunged forward to hack at the net with her axe. This exposed her side to another foe and she could not help a cry as a speartip pierced her armour, digging deep into her shoulder.
The goblin that had injured her was swiftly slain by Skraffi, while Gabbik relinquished his shield to the goblins and snatched a knife from his belt to replace it. Skraffi stepped in front of Haldora as she staggered back, blood oozing between the links of her mail, her right arm going weak.
For a moment she thought all was lost. The goblins were in amongst them, biting and clawing as well as hacking with short swords and swinging mauls with nails and sharp stones bound into them. Everything slowed down and the noise of battle was replaced with an odd whooshing sensation of blood pounding in Haldo
ra’s ears. Green, grinning faces loomed up in front of her. She tried to swing her axe but her fingers felt numb. Red eyes bored into her and sharp little teeth flashed in the lantern light.
Like a vision from a saga, a gold-clad dwarf crashed into view, scattering goblins with every swing of his shining rune axe. Green-skinned heads and limbs and tattered black robes parted before him.
Prince Horthrad led his veterans at the tip of a dwarf wedge, slashing into the ranks of the goblins as easily as his axe bit into their flesh. For a moment Haldora came face to face with the prince. She thought he smiled at her before he turned away, leading a fresh charge against the fleeing goblins.
Haldora felt faint and allowed the rest of her company to advance past her. When she was clear, she stumbled against a column and sat down, back to the stone. Her arm was seizing up and it was difficult to move her fingers. She let her head loll back, her helm clanging against the granite pillar. She wondered what had happened to Nakka. She had not seen him since the battle had started. It didn’t matter just then and, just for a moment, Haldora closed her eyes, mind filled with the image of Prince Horthrad.
She did not know for how long she had passed out. It might have been a brief moment or the rest of the day. She roused herself when she realised that the sound of fighting had almost gone, replaced by the distant echo of triumphant shouts and the thuds of blades into flesh.
Opening her eyes, she saw dwarfs streaming back from the archways, bloodied but unbroken. The king was amongst them and with him the two princes, but they paid Haldora no heed, passing by some distance away, deep in conversation with their captains.
‘You were right,’ said a well-articulated voice. Haldora looked up and saw the mashed face of the Slayer looking down at her. There was a fresh cut between his eyes, from where the bridge of his nose would have been and up the left side of his brow. His crest was flattened in places. ‘No doom for me today.’
‘I know that is what you desire, but I am glad that you live to defend my home.’
