by Warhammer
They were victorious. The skaven were all dead. Only those trapped within the thunderously turning wheels remained, utterly oblivious to the battle and locked in a hellish, spinning nightmare.
But the destruction was not at an end. Even as Emelda stowed Dunrik’s axe, slabs of rock broke away from the ceiling where the lightning had damaged it, plummeting into the pool of water surrounding the pumping engine. A massive chunk, one of the dilapidated archways of the vast chamber, crashed down onto one of the wheels that drove the pistons crushing it and the creatures within utterly.
‘We must destroy that abomination,’ bellowed Uthor as he fought the din of the engine, his steely gaze softening as it went from the skaven construction to Emelda.
‘Are you…?’
‘Valaya protects me,’ she replied.
‘We need only to open the Barduraz Varn,’ said Rorek, the sporadic lightning generated by the two remaining wheels casting his face in ephemeral flashes. ‘The flood waters will bring what is left down.’
‘How are we to reach the gate?’ asked Emelda.
‘That stairway will take us to the opening mechanism,’ Rorek answered, pointing to a set of narrow, stone steps – partially obscured by the extremities of the pumping engine – leading to the huge bar of gold, copper and bronze that prevented the Barduraz Varn from opening.
Uthor at the lead, the three dwarfs rushed the steps quickly, taking them two at a time.
‘Mind the wheel!’ shouted Rorek above the incredible noise of the engine.
Part of the stairway brought the dwarfs perilously close to one of the whirring generator wheels. Uthor had to press his back against the stone to make sure he wasn’t dragged off the steps and into it. Edging by slowly, he felt the whip and pull of the air as it was smashed against his face, thick with the stink of burning flesh. Through the blurring effect of the rapidly spinning wheel he caught snatches of the slaves labouring madly within. Their bloodshot eyes bulged with intense effort, panting for breath through froth-covered mouths, fur pressed down under a thick lather of sweat. The thane saw other shapes in the kaleidoscopic vista, too, the remains of the wretched creatures that couldn’t maintain the pace or that fell, their broken bodies bouncing up and down with the wheel’s momentum and slowly being smashed to pulp.
Traversing the deadly stretch of stairway, Uthor finally reached the locking mechanism of the gate, the way opening out into a simple stone platform with a large wheel crank in the centre, riveted to the floor via a broad, flat iron plate. The others were not far behind when the thane of Kadrin took up a position at the wheel crank. He pushed hard but it wouldn’t yield, not even a fraction.
‘It’s tough,’ he yelled. ‘Lend your strength to it.’
‘It can’t be opened that way,’ Rorek told him, arriving on the platform just after Emelda. ‘We must first release the lock,’ he added, pointing at the magnificent gold, copper and bronze bar that spanned the entire width of the gate.
‘Here,’ cried Emelda, stood before a shallow alcove in the wall.
Upon closer inspection, Uthor noticed there was a round metal recess in it with four square stubs of iron sticking out.
‘What now?’ asked the thane of Kadrin, turning to his engineer.
‘It is rhun-sealed,’ Rorek replied, scrutinising the indentation in the rock before he looked directly at Uthor. ‘We cannot open it without a key.’
Standing atop the great anvil, chained axe dripping blood, Azgar surveyed the swell of the battle below. Teeming rat-kin hordes thrashed against the thinning dwarfen shield wall that had been pressed all the way back to the forgemaster’s platform. Death frenzy was seemingly upon the foul creatures, muzzles frothing as they squealed madly to get at the dawi through the great arch. An endless, undulating sea of furred bodies stretched beyond it as yet more ratmen piled into the foundry.
Azgar kept his hand on the wyvern-horn hunting through the thronging skaven with narrowed eyes. The dwarfs were but half the number they were at the start of the battle. They would not last much longer. Yet the slayer resisted the urge to blow the note that was to signal all of their deaths. He was waiting; waiting for something to show itself…
Halgar was tiring. He would not admit it to himself but his aching limbs, the fire in his back and shoulder, the thundering breaths in his chest told him so. He slashed open a rat-kin’s throat before breaking the snout of another with a savage punch. Three more of the vermin came on at him – the skaven seemed to surround them now – and he was forced back, defending a flurry of blows. For a moment his vision blurred and he misjudged a parry. The errant blow struck his thigh and the longbeard cried out.
Drimbold stepped in and hacked the cackling ratman down before it could take advantage.
Halgar nodded to the Grey dwarf, heaving more air into his lungs.
‘Stay by me,’ he barked, mustering what breath he could.
‘You do not need to watch me,’ Drimbold replied, slicing the ear off a slave fodder. ‘I will stay in the fight.’
‘No, lad, not because of that,’ Halgar replied, his axe held uncertainly in his hand, ‘because I’m going blind.’
‘I will,’ said Drimbold determinedly, taking up a position at the longbeard’s back and fending off a reckless rat-kin spear lunge.
Halgar had gone past pain, surpassed exhaustion now. Raw hatred for his foes kept him going, made his axe blade swing and take more lives. The killing became almost ritualistic in the dense fug of battle and everything else; every sense, every feeling was swallowed by it. When the longbeard felt the rock at his back slip away, all of that changed. He looked over his shoulder to see Drimbold slumped on one knee, clutching his chest.
‘To your feet!’ he cried, cutting through the shoulder of a rat-kin slave. Drimbold wasn’t listening or, at least, he couldn’t hear the longbeard. The Grey dwarf cried out when a curved blade ran him through, punching out of his back, shearing his light armour easily. Halgar whirled, blinking back his blurring vision, or tears – he couldn’t tell which – and cut Drimbold’s attacker down.
‘To me!’ the longbeard cried, gathering the Grey dwarf up in his arms as he fell back, a cohort of clan warriors surrounding them both in a shield wall. Halgar dragged the Grey dwarf back bodily, a geyser of blood spitting from his chest, into the rear ranks and set him down.
‘Uthor… told… me…’ Drimbold gasped through blood-flecked lips – every word was a struggle. ‘He said… I was to protect you…’
Halgar patted the Grey dwarf’s shoulder, unable to speak as he regarded the dwarf’s wounded body.
‘I… failed,’ Drimbold uttered with his dying breath, the light in his eyes fading to grey.
‘No, lad,’ Halgar replied with tears in his eyes. ‘No you haven’t.’
The longbeard rested his gnarled hand over Drimbold’s dead, staring eyes. When he took it away again they were closed. He then leant down. The words were choked as he whispered in Drimbold’s ear.
‘You are a half dwarf no longer.’
Halgar wiped the back of his hand over his eyes and stood up, brandishing his axe.
‘Guard him well,’ he ordered three shield-bearing warriors sternly, who nodded sombrely before arraying themselves around the Grey dwarf.
With that the longbeard stalked away, back to the front and back to the killing.
At long last, Azgar found what he was looking for. Across the skaven ranks he espied their warlord, squeaking orders and forcing his way to the front.
It was an unusual trait for a rat-kin leader, the slayer thought to himself, to throw itself into the fight. There could be no mistaking it, though. Decked in thick armour of tarnished metal, wielding a weighty-looking glaive and ragged cloak dragging in its wake, this was the opponent Azgar had been waiting for.
Now he knew the skaven were committed to the attack.
Bellicose glee in his heart, the slayer raised the wyvern-horn to his lips and, with his mighty chest bulging, blew out a long and powerful n
ote.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The wyvern-horn echoed throughout the hold, a reverberant and sonorous blast that carried through earth, stone and flood.
‘There!’ cried Gromrund, waiting inside Dibna’s Chamber.
‘I hear it,’ Thalgrim replied, poised before the statue of the engineer. As the lodefinder lifted his pick-mattock he looked over his shoulder at the hammerer. ‘Once this begins, there will be little time.’
Gromrund nodded his understanding. ‘Make your strike well.’
Thalgrim let fly and met the statue with precise force.
‘It is done,’ he said, turning on his heel as a shallow crack emerged in the rock, running rapidly up Dibna’s leg, across his torso, beyond his shoulder and up his outstretched arm until it finally reached the ceiling.
Gromrund watched the fissure’s course slightly agog, small chips of rocks falling from its terminus at the ceiling.
‘Flee, now!’ Thalgrim urged, leaping into the shaft and disappearing from view.
Gromrund followed quickly, a final nervous glance behind him before he descended. Water was trickling through the ever-widening cracks and one of Dibna’s fingers fell away, shattering as it struck the floor. Darkness beckoned the hammerer as he approached the shaft and raced into it.
Gromrund half climbed, half slid down the shaft. Wisps of smoke spiralled from his armoured gauntlets with the intense friction of his descent. There was a nervous moment when he switched from the thick chain dangling from Dibna’s Drop to the lodefinder’s rope but he made it without falling to his doom. A growing sense of urgency had started to overwhelm him, exacerbated by the speck of flame from Thalgrim’s candles diminishing rapidly beneath him as the lodefinder made expedient progress.
‘You’ll get yourself killed at that pace,’ Gromrund called down to him.
‘As might you if you don’t pick up yours,’ came the distant, echoing response.
Gromrund intensified his efforts as much as he dared and, looking down again, swore he could make out a faint corona of washed-out light.
We will make it, thought the hammerer, as an almighty crash resonated above them, followed by a thunderous roar. Time was up.
Water fell like rain at first, droplets splashing harmlessly off Gromrund’s armour. Then it became a torrent, growing more violent with each passing second. The hammerer slid now, almost free falling, determined to arrest his descent when he neared the bottom of the shaft. That plan was reduced to tatters when the full fury of the deluge above smashed into him, and he was forced to grip the rope tightly to avoid being ripped away from it and cast like tinder into the darkness.
Gromrund roared his defiance and tried to edge down an inch. He did but had to grip hard again as the icy cascade battered the hammerer remorselessly. Gromrund had his head down and the pounding water thumped against his neck, so hard he thought it might snap. Thalgrim was below him, he was sure of it. He could just make out the hazy figure of the lodefinder through the downpour. The shaft shuddered against the elemental onslaught, chunks of loose rock sent spiralling earthward. One smacked against Gromrund’s warhelm, setting it askew. Another thunked his pauldron armour and the hammerer nearly lost his grip, crying out in anguish.
Chilling heat blazed up his arm and back. Gromrund shut his eyes against the pain, it taking all of the hammerer’s effort just to hold on. When he opened them again, he tried to gauge the distance to the ground – thirty, fifty feet, perhaps. If he dropped now he could survive. The decision was made for the hammerer when a great slab of stone sheared away from the shaft wall. Its jagged edge rammed the rope into the opposite side, cutting it loose. Gromrund fell and the hunk of rock fell after him.
Pain seared up his right leg and something cracked as Gromrund struck the ground, spluttering as the gushing Black Water engulfed him. Underwater, his heavy armour anchoring him, the hammerer’s world grew dim and quiet. Sound, light and feeling seemed to lose all meaning as the icy deluge robbed him of his sense and bearings. Memory reached out to Gromrund from the past, the day when he had taken the warhelm of his clan to continue the Tallhelm legacy.
Father…
Kromrund Tallhelm lay before him in a gilded sarcophagus carved from stone by the master masons of Karak Hirn. Ashen-faced and in repose, his lord and father was no more. Upon his breast there sat the mighty horned warhelm of the clan, a prestigious symbol of their lineage and the oaths they had made to serve King Kurgaz, founder of the Hornhold, as his bodyguards.
As Gromrund reached out for the warhelm he felt himself being pulled away and the sound of distant voices rushing closer.
Spitting and cursing, Gromrund emerged above the floodwater, cascading readily into the underdeep.
‘Pull him clear!’ he heard Thalgrim bellow and his body was heaved away again.
Blinking back rivulets of water eking into his warhelm and down his face, he recoiled, landing hard on his rump, as a massive chunk of rock and debris crashed down onto the confluence of the crossroads. A few moments ago, he had been floundering in that very spot. Looking around, Gromrund noticed his companions were with him. Thalgrim and Hakem helped the armoured hammerer to his feet. Getting up, he saw that the flood water reached his lower torso.
‘We cannot stay here,’ Thalgrim cried above the crashing din of the waterfall, wading frantically in the only direction left to them, the rock fall having demolished and blocked off the other three.
Breathing heavily Ralkan slogged after the lodefinder, struggling in his drenched robes and dragging the book of remembering after him as if leading a lode pony. ‘Farther ahead,’ he gasped, ‘I am sure there is a way upward.’
With no time to question or verify it, the dwarfs drove on.
Hakem and Gromrund laboured at the back – the two warriors wore the heaviest armour and were finding it hard going.
‘Can you walk?’ Hakem asked of the hammerer, supporting him beneath the shoulder.
‘Aye,’ Gromrund replied, but didn’t refuse the merchant thane’s help.
‘You are limping badly,’ Hakem told him, feeling the hammerer’s laboured gait as the merchant thane bore his weight.
‘Aye,’ was Gromrund’s reply.
‘If we survive, you may need a stick.’
‘There’ll be no stick. The hammerers of the Tallhelm clan walk on two legs, not three!’ Gromrund raged as the pair struggled on.
Wading through the rapidly rising swell, the dwarfs made pitiful progress. Barely fifty feet from the crossroads and the water was already up to their shoulders.
Thalgrim gazed up at the lofty arches of the vaulted tunnel ceiling and realised they wouldn’t make it like this.
‘Remove your armour,’ he cried to the others as a column behind them cracked and fell into the flood water, scattering debris. ‘We will have to swim for it.’ The lodefinder unbuckled his mail vest and let it plummet into the river surrounding them.
The other dwarfs followed suit, shrugging off chainmail, unclasping breastplates and greaves, divesting themselves of leather hauberks and vambraces. They shed the armour clumsily but quickly. Each piece was an heirloom, the loss of which was felt profoundly, and discarded with an oath to one of the Ancestor Gods that reparations would be made.
By the time it was done, the water had reached their chins.
‘Your warhelm,’ said Thalgrim. ‘You must leave it behind – it will weigh you down.’
Gromrund folded his arms.
‘The Tallhelm has never been removed in five generations of my clan, since before the Horn hold was founded. I will not break that tradition now.’
‘You will drown,’ Hakem reasoned, now wearing only his tunic and breeches. ‘Leave it and come back to reclaim your honour.’
‘Upon my death you may prise it from my head,’ the hammerer snarled, still fully armoured.
The water rose again, up to the dwarfs’ shoulders and getting deeper with each moment.
‘Help me,’ Hakem burbled, spitting mouthfuls of
the Black Water as he tried to lift Gromrund. Thalgrim and Ralkan swam over to him, and hoisted the hammerer up from beneath his armpits.
‘Leave me,’ he roared, his head popping above the turbulent waterline with their combined efforts.
‘Remove the warhelm!’ Hakem begged him, staring the hammerer in the face as he said it.
‘Never!’ Gromrund raged back before his snarling visage softened. ‘Go. Find your dooms and, if you’re able, tell my king that I fought and died with honour.’
They could hold him no longer. The hammerer was like an anchor and dragged them all down with him.
Hakem felt his fingers slipping and watched as Gromrund – the hammerer had his arms folded still – fell away into the gloomy water, bubbles trailing from beneath his warhelm. The merchant thane, swimming hard, broke the surface of the now swelling river and drew great gulps of air into his lungs.
The current that surged through the underdeep was strong and carried the three dwarfs along by its will alone, smashing them into columns, plunging them beneath the water only for them to resurface desperately a moment later. Hakem was lost in it, lost in a maelstrom of spitting foam and churning water.
‘Here!’ he heard Thalgrim cry. Seeing something in the water, he reached out and grabbed it.
The lodefinder hauled him around the corner of a massive column, he and Ralkan crushed against it by the pressure of the flood. In his other hand he had his pick-mattock, lodged in the wall for grip. A brutal-looking gash was etched upon his forehead where it had been struck by a jutting stone.
‘The rock is weak here,’ Thalgrim shouted over the thrashing surf. ‘I can break through it.’
‘Where will it lead us?’ Hakem replied, looking to Ralkan.
The lorekeeper shook his head, just trying to hold on.
Though they had only been carried by the water for a few minutes, they could have travelled a great distance. There was no way of knowing where they were now.
‘Does it matter?’ cried the lodefinder. ‘This path will end in our deaths.’
