by Warhammer
The gunner seemed oblivious to the screeching protestations of its partner and yanked backed on the firing chain with reckless abandon.
Halgar, Drimbold and all those dwarfs in the vicinity of the cannon were thrown back as an explosion wracked the tunnel, leaving a blackened scar on the ground fraught with tangled skaven corpses.
Dunrik was smashed to the ground by a sudden, powerful shock wave. Dazed, he got to his feet, helping up Hakem and the few Firehand dwarfs that still lived.
Body parts littered the tunnel in steaming, fire-scorched chunks. The rat ogres were dead, engulfed in the fearsome explosion. Moreover, the way was clear to Halgar and the others. They’d have to run for it and close the short distance up the tunnel quickly. The skaven were already gathering their wits and regrouping to attack again.
‘Come together!’ Uthor cried in the Great Hall, his throng forming up in disciplined ranks around him, making a square shape with shields locked.
The skaven masses came from the shadows, spilling from their hiding places and concealed tunnels in a foetid, flea-infested swarm. They were on the dwarfs quickly, several warriors torn down before they had shields readied.
Uthor fended off a hail of missiles before hacking down an emaciated ratman with his rune axe. More came at them in their droves, almost throwing themselves suicidally onto the dwarfs’ blades and hammer heads. Blinking back a swath of foul-smelling skaven blood as it splashed against his face and helmet, Uthor saw these diminutive rats were nought but fodder, cast into the melee and urged on by the cruel whips of their masters. The skaven sought to tire them, wear them down until exhaustion took them and then death. Uthor raged against it and redoubled his efforts.
‘Give no quarter,’ he bellowed, turning left and right to bolster his warriors with his stirring rhetoric. ‘Have no fear, for we are the sons of Grungni!’ Uthor caught the eye of Borri, who fought furiously beside his kinsdwarfs, anger lending him vigour. Another hail of sharp stones and wicked throwing knives filled the air, flung from behind the skaven slave fodder. Uthor raised his shield to repel the missiles. When he looked back, he couldn’t see Borri anymore.
Dunrik and Hakem stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Halgar and the others in the bottleneck. Azgar and what remained of the Grim Brotherhood backed up to join them, having aborted their attempts to break through the innumerable rat-kin hordes, and the trapped dwarf forces were finally reunited but being pressed into an ever diminishing circle.
Ralkan was at the centre of it, several stoutly armoured dwarf bodies between him and a vicious death at the claws of the skaven. The lorekeeper had abandoned his borrowed hammer – Drimbold wielded it now, in lieu of the weapon he’d thrown to destroy the rat-kin’s fire cannon – and was frantically feeling the rock wall at the dwarfs’ backs with his hands, muttering feverishly.
Dunrik watched the lorekeeper incredulously and caught Halgar’s eye.
‘His mind has finally given in to despair and terror,’ said the longbeard, hacking down a skaven with his axe, before breaking the nose of another with his fist.
No matter how many the dwarfs killed, the numbers of the rat-kin did not dwindle and their vigour showed no sign of lessening.
‘No way out,’ growled Azgar cutting a ratman in half, ‘and an endless horde to slay,’ he added with no small amount of relish. ‘It is a worthy death.’
Halgar nodded, battering a hooded skaven with his axe pommel.
‘There is my seat made ready,’ said the longbeard, his voice rising above the battle din so it might be heard by all of his kinsdwarfs. ‘At the table of my ancestors it doth await me. Upon the rock are my deeds arrayed.’
‘Lo do I see the line of kings,’ Dunrik said, joining in the sombre deathsong.
‘Lo do I see Grungni and Valaya,’ added Hakem, the words taught to him when he was but a beardling.
‘Tremble o’ mountain.’ Azgar’s distinctive timbre gave weight to the recitation.
‘Rage o’ heart,’ said Drimbold, last of all. At least he would die with his kin, a hammer in his hand.
‘For hearth and hold, for oath and honour, for wrath and ruin – give fire to my voice and steel to my arm that I might be remembered!’ Halgar’s voice was dominant as the entire dwarf throng rejoiced as one.
Only Ralkan did not sing. Instead, his fingers found the subtle permutations in the rock wall he’d been searching for. As he manipulated them carefully, a thin line ran rapidly up the length of the wall, across the roof and back down again spitting out dust as it went. A vein of light eked through it, shining faintly – a secret door, made in the elder ages, and Ralkan had found it.
Gromrund crushed another skaven skull with his great hammer, but he was tiring. A boot to the groin and a pommel smash to its head as it doubled over put paid to another rat-kin, but the furred abominations seethed in the Great Hall. He had been one of the last to get through, not counting those unfortunates that had been poisoned to death by the gas or stabbed in the back by the rat cowards.
Bitterness filled the hammerer’s heart as he fought. Uthor’s plan had failed, and failed catastrophically. How the skaven had tracked them to this place in a domain as vast as Karak Varn, he didn’t know. His only consolation was that he’d at least die with honour.
Through the curtailed view of his warhelm, Gromrund saw a savage blow come at him. Using his weapon defensively, he caught the attack against the haft of his great hammer. A huge skaven warrior confronted him, clad in thick, cured leather, studded with spikes. The creature’s fur was the colour of coal. It wielded a brutal looking glaive, the blade dark and wet.
The ratman pressed, scraping the weapon against the wooden haft of Gromrund’s hammer as a second blade thrust at him. Locked with the first skaven warrior, the hammerer was unable to defend himself. He did all he could, and twisted sharply, the second blade grazing against his armour, ripping out mail links and scattering them like silver coins. Gromrund staggered; managed to heave the first skaven back. He saw a blur of grey to the corner of his eye and felt an almighty blow against his head, the metal warhelm deafening him as it clanged loudly in his ears. Vision swimming, Gromrund went down on one knee, almost dropping his great hammer. He could smell blood. Through bleary eyes he saw the huge skaven cackle as it raised its glaive for the deathblow.
‘I’m sorry, father,’ he whispered and put up his hammer feebly.
The skaven fell; several black-shafted arrows pin-cushioned its swarthy body. The other turned, screeching maliciously towards some unseen threat.
Gromrund got to his feet and saw that a great many of the ratmen had whirled around towards the source of the attack. He looked at the skaven corpse again – a momentary lull in the fighting, as the rules of engagement were seemingly re-established – it had been felled by grobi arrows.
Bestial war cries rent the air and Gromrund watched, open mouthed as hordes of greenskins streamed from unseen tunnels and unknown passageways. Black-garbed goblins, hooded and bearing short bows, loosed arrows into the packed rat-kin ranks; massive, brutish orcs smashed a thin line of slave fodder aside beneath hob-nailed boot and cleaver, whilst trolls were unleashed into the furred mass to gorge and crush and maim.
Where the skaven rushed to meet the greenskin horde their numbers thinned, and an avenue of escape presented itself. Across the melee in which dwarf, skaven and greenskin fought, Gromrund caught the attention of Uthor. The thane had seen the route too – it led to an oaken gate, stout enough to hold an army back if properly braced, but not so massive that it could not be opened and defended quickly.
‘To the gate!’ Gromrund heard Uthor cry, hoping that their embattled enemies would be too distracted to impede them.
‘Go, now!’ Gromrund added his voice to the thane’s order.
Staying together, the dwarfs moved as quickly as they dared to the oaken gate. The way was diminishing all the time, as rat-kin began filling the gaps, struggling to fight them and the greenskins at once.
Building moment
um, the throng adopted a spear-tip formation and drove a thick wedge into the skaven ranks, scattering them as they charged headlong through pressing bodies and the intermittent hail of arrows.
‘They are the grobi from the ravine,’ Gromrund shouted above the din to Uthor – the two dwarfs were shoulder-to-shoulder in the rush.
‘I recognise the urk chieftain,’ he added, catching glimpses through the frantic fighting.
‘Lokki fought him at the edge of the Black Water,’ Uthor offered, cutting down a skaven warrior who stood in his path, before battering another away with his shield.
‘We were followed here,’ the hammerer growled, shattering a ratman’s spine and pummelling the hip of another with a wicked side swipe.
Anything further would have to wait. The gateway loomed.
The throng gathered into a semicircle, arrayed around the gate at their back. Though fighting two foes at once, the rat-kin still came at them but the line was holding and the skaven were repelled by shield, hammer and axe.
As the battle became ever more furious, goblins and orcs found their way to the dwarfs’ protective cordon. They too were repulsed with equal violent fervour.
Rorek worked desperately at the gate lock, wiping a wash of nervous sweat from his forehead. A shallow sounding click rewarded his efforts and, with help, he pulled the gate open. The depleted throng piled through quickly, barely half of those who’d made it into the Great Hall, but in good order. A thin line of shield bearers fought a desperate rearguard, allowing the majority of the dwarfs to pass through unhindered.
‘Down!’ Rorek cried and the rearguard squatted to the floor, shields upraised, as a host of quarrellers loosed a storm of crossbow bolts into the skaven harassing their kinsdwarfs. Rorek added his own rapid-firing fusillade and a score of ratmen were cut down. The short respite was enough time for the shield bearers to hurry through the doorway and those warriors positioned either side of it to slam the gate shut.
Thalgrim and two of the Sootbeards dragged a hefty bar across it before the dull hammering from the other side began as the skaven attempted to batter their way through. After that, Thalgrim took several thick, metal door spikes from a pouch on his belt and smacked them against the base of the door to wedge it shut. Rorek did the same and, satisfied the way back was secure, at least for a time, the dwarfs fled.
‘Help me push!’ the lorekeeper said, grunting as he threw himself against the wall. A few of the dwarfs turned and seeing the rectangle of light lent their own weight.
The secret door opened and Ralkan hurried through, eyes wide when he saw the plateau of stone basked in the white radiance coming from above. Through a long, natural funnel in the mountain the light of the upper world shone down, resolving itself in a hazy aura when it struck stone.
‘The Diamond Shaft,’ the lorekeeper breathed, in awestruck wonderment.
The plateau led to a set of descending steps and beyond that another plateau. From there a massively long stairwell dropped down into darkness and was lost from sight completely. On either side of the magnificent edifice of stone was a sheer drop into the underdeep, so cavernous and black that it might have been bottomless.
Overcoming his awe, Ralkan surged across the first plateau and was heading down the steps and onto the second, much larger, expanse of stone when the skaven came teeming through the secret door.
Most of the dwarf throng had followed the lorekeeper; the slayers and a few of the clan warriors mounting a fierce rearguard. The throbbing wave of rat-kin smashed against the rock of dwarf warriors and several of the foul creatures were pitched over the edge of the short stairway and fell screaming to their doom in the void below. But as the skaven numbers grew, the dwarfs were pushed back and slowly overrun. The fight came to a stalemate at the second plateau; the ratmen, despite their masses, unable to break the sons of Grungni, and the dwarfs refusing to give any more ground. Bodies, both skaven and dwarf, fell like fat rain into the hungry abyss surrounding them, the stone plateau, as mighty as it was, insufficient to hold them all. Rat-kin thronged on the stairs, bunched so close together that those in the middle were crushed and suffocated, while those on the edges were pushed off the edge into oblivion.
Rune-light illuminated Hakem’s face as he struck relentlessly with the Honakinn Hammer, the weapon that was his birthright and a formidable relic of the craft of elder days. As he swung, the merchant thane sang the battle-dirge of his ancestors, the Ever Blazing Beacon. He smote his foes gloriously, punctuating every stanza with a hammer strike.
A sudden surge of skaven pushed forward into him and his kinsdwarfs. Hakem used his shield to crush a ratman’s muzzle and pitched another over the edge with a swift kick to the stomach. A third was smashed by the dwarf’s hammer, its neck snapping back with an audible crack of bone. Hakem raised his rune weapon to smite a fourth but found he was pinned. The ratmen came on like a resurgent tide, literally thrown at him. Two dwarf warriors fell to their deaths in the charge. The merchant thane staggered, boots scraping stone underfoot; he felt the drag on his shield arm as it was crushed to his side. In the maelstrom of fur, flesh and steel a ratman bared its filthy fangs to bite at him. Hakem head-butted it and the creature’s nose caved, before falling away into the mass. Bellowing, he freed his hammer.
‘Feel the wrath of the Honakinn–’
There was the streak of tarnished steel in the gloom.
Pain seared up Hakem’s arm, a dense ball of it throbbing at his wrist. He could no longer feel the weight of his rune hammer. Fear, so thick and palpable it made him almost retch, seized the dwarf and he looked over. In that brief moment of uncertainty, he thought of the shame he would bring to his family and his clan if his grip had failed him and the Honakinn Hammer was lost.
When Hakem saw the bloody stump of his wrist from where his hand had been cleaved off, he screamed.
Dunrik shouldered his way through the rat-kin mob, hacking frenziedly as he went. Hakem’s agonised scream was still echoing in his ears as he ducked a blow aimed at his neck, the hooded skaven warrior killing one of its brethren behind the dwarf instead. With a grunt, Dunrik drove the spike atop his axe blade into the dumbfounded creature’s chin. He kicked away the corpse and sketched a ragged figure eight with the blade, carving up a cluster of skaven who had sprung at him. Another launched itself over the melee, howling insanely, muzzle foaming and with daggers poised. Dunrik took it in flight on his shield – legs braced against the sudden impact – and using its momentum, propelled the snarling creature off the plateau and into the waiting darkness. He reached Hakem, intercepting a halberd blow aimed for the dwarf merchant’s head. Dunrik trapped the weapon against the ground with his axe then stamped on the haft, shattering it. An uppercut with the edge of his shield ripped off the skaven’s jaw and it fell in a mangled heap.
Hakem was clutching the bleeding stump of his wrist, his shield hanging limply on his arm by the leather straps as he scrabbled across the ground in search of his dismembered hand and hammer.
‘Get to your feet, fool!’ snarled Dunrik, fending off another hooded skaven – mercifully, it seemed they had exhausted their supply of poisoned globes.
‘I must retrieve it,’ the merchant thane wailed, crawling on his knees, heedless of the deadly battle around him.
Hakem’s eyes widened suddenly. Dunrik followed his gaze and saw a dwarf hand, bedecked with jewelled rings and still gripping a rune hammer.
A tremor rippled through the plateau, felt even above the thudding resonance of shuffling feet. Deep rumbling, like thunder, came next and a cacophony of splitting stone swallowed up the battle din as if it were nothing but a morsel of sound. Terrified screams of dwarf and rat filled the air as the short stair collapsed, overburdened by the weight of armoured bodies and shaken loose by the exertions of combat.
The impromptu temblor shook Hakem’s disembodied hand. It and the hammer pitched over the edge and plunged into the void. The merchant thane’s anguished cries merged with the fading death screams of th
ose on the short stair, and he raced forward about to go over the side after the ancient weapon.
‘No!’ Dunrik bellowed, battering a skaven aside as he reached out and grabbed Hakem’s belt. ‘Stand fast,’ he cried, but Hakem was already on his way and the dwarf’s momentum pulled Dunrik with him. The Everpeak dwarf slipped and Hakem was half over the lip on the plateau, staring down the throat of the abyss, when at last he arrested the merchant’s flight and dragged him back.
‘Idiot,’ said Dunrik, leaning down to help Hakem up. ‘No relic is worth an honourless death–’ the dwarf stopped when he felt the first spear-tip pierce his back. Snarling in rage, Dunrik was about to turn when a second split the links of his armour and drove into his side. He twisted to face his attackers; the snapped hafts of the spears still embedded in him were like ice blades of pain. Dunrik raised his axe, too slowly, as a third spear impaled his exposed chest. His shield arm went limp, a blow from a mace shattering his shoulder guard and bruising bone. The snarling visages of four skaven warriors, since divested of their hoods, regarded him.
Dunrik tried to bellow his defiance and ready his axe for one final swing, when one of the vermin lunged forward and sank a rusty dagger into his neck.
‘Emelda…’ the dwarf gurgled, and breathed his last.
Hakem watched in horror as Dunrik died, snapped spear hafts still jutting from his body. The merchant thane was dazed and weak from blood loss. He still clutched his wrist feebly as the fully armoured Everpeak dwarf fell on top of him, smashing him into the ground. Hakem’s head struck stone and he blacked out.
‘Here!’ a voice cried. ‘Quickly, he is alive.’
Drimbold heaved at the body of Dunrik crushing the merchant thane. Azgar arrived to help and the two of them lifted the dead Everpeak dwarf off Hakem.
‘He’s lost a lot of blood,’ said Ralkan, waiting close by.
Azgar raised Hakem’s arm carefully. ‘He’s lost a lot more than that,’ he said, showing them the stump.
