by Warhammer
‘My cousin Fendril claims to have found the beast’s lair,’ ventured one of the thanes kneeling before the old king. He wore gromril mail and carried a pick and lantern, marking him out as a lode warden, one of the miner clans. ‘He said he saw the trappings of a drakk.’
King Durik was shaking his head, his wrinkled leather face screwed up into a venomous scowl. ‘There are no dragons in Karak Azgal,’ he said. ‘See there!’ He slapped his shoulder hard where a scaled mane unfurled down his back. The magnificent cloak ended in a dragon’s head, still attached to its flesh, glassy-eyed and very dead.
‘Graug the Terrible!’ he declared to his audience. In his rage, he began to cough, spitting bloody phlegm into his hand. A pair of the hammerers, one whom Skalf recognised as the champion Belgrad, were about to intervene when Durik gave them such a baleful glare as to freeze the warriors to the spot.
‘It was the last of the drakk,’ he said once recovered, and became solemn. ‘And though it killed Daled Stormbreaker, I have avenged him with its foul blood. There are no more dragons in Karak Azgal. Few in all of the Worlds Edge,’ he added. ‘Elves,’ he spat, ‘tried to rouse ’em during the Great War. They’ll not flock again.’
At the mention of elves, another of the thanes bowed his head. He was lighter armoured than the rest, but carried a raft of weapons in his belts. Skalf counted half a dozen hand axes, a double-bladed axe and a crossbow, not to mention various daggers and other small blades. On his pot helmet there was a crest of a black bird.
The lode warden was insistent. ‘Fendril was very specific, thane-king.’
King Durik rounded on him. ‘No more dragons!’ he bellowed, and every other dwarf present looked to the darkened corridors beyond the gate hall, fearing the grobi would have heard and come running.
None did, but the king’s ire was slow to fade to embers. He was coughing again, more blood on his hand and tunic. When he continued, his voice was low and wearier than before.
‘It is a troll, a wyvern perhaps. Nothing more.’
‘We shall slay it, my king,’ said a dwarf lord with a regal bearing. He was Darin, the king’s son and prince of Karak Azgal, and knelt with deference before his liege and father.
King Durik hobbled down from the wooden throne upon which he was giving audience to speak to his son directly. The hand upon Prince Darin’s shoulder was neither firm nor steady any more but it conveyed the king’s heartfelt emotion.
‘You are the last,’ he breathed in a voice fit for the tomb, like old parchment cracking. ‘If you die, the lineage of Karak Azgal dies with you,’ he said, vehemence and fear warring in his old, rheumy eyes. His hand shook with it but Prince Darin was quick to still these emotions with his own gauntleted hand upon his father’s.
‘I will kill it for you, father, and Azgal shall be restored.’
It was a flawed pledge, but one the son believed.
The last of the hunting party beat his chest in approval of such bold oath-making.
‘Whatever this creature is, be it troll or wyvern or some other horror of the deep world, it will trouble the bowels of Azgal no longer once we find it,’ he said, ‘so declares Magnin, son of Thord. We of the Stonehaft clan have ever been protectors of the gate. Be it Azgal or Azul, south or north along the Worlds Edge, our dawi blood is thick and unpolluted.’ He glanced at the hill dwarf, he who had been shamed at the king’s mention of elves.
King Durik was nodding, pleased and approving of the warrior-thanes before him.
‘Find it,’ he hissed, appraising them all with his gimlet gaze. ‘Kill it.’
The dank air of the inner gate hall was heavy with the stink of vermin.
Vorgil prodded one of the furred corpses with his boot, scowling.
‘Rat-kin,’ he announced unnecessarily. ‘Dead.’
Magnin snorted derisively. ‘Thank Grungni you are our scout and guide,’ he said, swinging his mattock to rest against his bulky shoulder guard.
Vorgil gave him a dirty look but continued.
‘Blade and cudgel wounds by the looks of it,’ he added, pulling the entwined bodies of the skaven away from one another with his pickaxe.
It was hard to tell how many, so badly battered were the corpses. The furred creatures were diminutive and had the aspect of men but one horribly conjoined with rats. Their stooped backs, pink tails and fang-filled muzzles looked particularly sinister in death. The clustering of the rank bodies suggested an ambush, but there was no sign of the ones who had perpetrated it. If any had died in the attack, they’d been dragged away into the darkness.
‘Grobi?’ asked Raglan. He was standing sentry at the arched entrance to the cavern. Here, like elsewhere in Hoard Peak, the gate was stripped of its gems and gilding. Even the hall itself, which would once have shimmered in the lode warden’s lantern light, was cold and bleak. Its hearth was empty, barring the skaven’s droppings and the bones of lesser creatures picked clean by the hungry ratmen. Several of the columns supporting the vaulted ceiling were broken and sat in untidy heaps of rubble, strewn across the shattered mosaic floor.
The dwarfs were barely an hour from the upper gate hall and the king when they’d discovered the slaughter. Soon, even the upper levels of Azgal would be overrun. Then where would King Durik hold forth?
‘Or some other interloping creature,’ declared Prince Darin. He was standing atop a fallen statue, loftier than the others in every way. A second arched doorway sat opposite the first. The thane-prince stared ahead into its darkling depths. In the lambent glow cast by Vorgil’s lantern, a set of broad stone steps could be discerned. ‘It is down there, waiting for us.’
There was something tainting the prince’s voice. Not fear, his sense of utter conviction eclipsed that. Rather it was uncertainty, or so Skalf thought, that he would not be up to the task of vanquishing the beast and restoring Karak Azgal to former glories. Skalf knew the weight of expectation like that; it was the mantle of his master’s death.
‘You will honour your father,’ said the runesmith from below the prince. Despite Skalf’s best efforts, the words sounded hollow.
Hegendour, the hearthguard, was stoic and silent on the other side of the statue but clearly believed in his regal charge and nodded slowly.
Prince Darin turned to the runesmith and the same fatalism that affected the king’s demeanour was visible in his eyes. It was echoed too in the chamber’s desolation.
‘I must,’ he said, ‘I am all that’s left.’
Vorgil had stopped examining the dead skaven to consult a map that he’d unrolled from one of his many pouches.
It caught Magnin’s interest. ‘I didn’t think there were any maps left of Azgal, leastways, not useful ones. Perished during the Time of Woe, so I heard.’
‘This was Fendril’s,’ said Vorgil, without looking up. ‘My cousin drew it before he last ventured into the deeps.’
‘And left it to you?’ Magnin looked confused. ‘Wouldn’t he need it to get back?’
Now, Vorgil looked up. ‘He drew a great many maps. No lode warden worth his pickaxe needs a map to a place he’s already been. This was left to me so I could find him, if…’ he trailed off.
‘If?’ Magnin was about as subtle as the mattock slung over his shoulder.
‘If he didn’t come back, ufdi,’ snapped Raglan.
Magnin rounded on the hill dwarf, who was still peering the way they’d already come.
‘And is that what concerns you, elf-friend? Are you worried that this hunt is beyond the skill of your silk-swaddled, pointy-ear loving clan?’
Raglan snarled. ‘I am every inch the dawi that–’
‘Enough!’ The prince’s voice wasn’t loud, but it was commanding as he leapt down off the column. ‘We press on.’ He looked to Vorgil, ‘Lode warden, do you have our bearing?’
‘Down, my liege,’ he said, and the words echoed around the musky cavern, ‘down until we reach a fork.’
‘And then?’
‘We delve deeper.’
‘Again, beardling.’
Skalf looked at the chunk of rock, limned by the ruddy orange glow of the forge fire, and frowned. The young dwarf was wearing a leather apron over a simple cloth shirt and breeches. Sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his thick forearms pulsed with muscle and exertion. He’d lost count of the hours.
‘But it is unbreakable.’
The master exhaled a long and perturbed breath. A gout of smoke came with it, prickling at the beardling’s nostrils. With a jewelled dagger he picked at a piece of roast boar still trapped between his teeth from the great feast. Skalf had been forbidden admittance. His stomach growled in sympathetic exasperation with his face.
‘Again,’ said the master, sternly.
Wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his soot-stained hand, Skalf did as asked. Placing all of his considerable strength into the blow, he struck. It was only when he opened his eyes that he realised the chunk of rock was untouched. It wasn’t even chipped.
‘How is this possible?’ he breathed.
The master grunted, and used his bulk to muscle Skalf aside. His mailed armour was hot and stung the beardling’s unprotected skin.
‘Move your weakling arse!’ he snapped, and like lightning his hammer was in his hand, the old words upon his lips, and he struck.
The rock split evenly and within was a shimmering rune blade of purest gromril.
‘See?’ he said to his apprentice. ‘It can be done.’ The master gestured to the two sides of the sundered rock with his hammer, ‘Karadurak, the ever-stone, drawn from the heart of the world. Only a runesmith can break it, with but a single blow. Use the words as they were taught you, beardling. You can engrave the rune of stone without assistance, and have even wrought master runes under my watchful eye, but you have yet to split the karadurak. Only here, in the deep rock, is where you’ll find the veins of old magic. It is powerful, but to wield it you must break the ever-stone. Until you do, you will never leave this forge!’
He gestured to another piece of karadurak, sitting upon a second anvil. It was fathomless black, flecked with silver like iridescent star-fires and more unyielding than hardest obsidian.
‘This one is yours alone,’ the master promised, turning his back.
A plume of smoke spilled in his wake as he left the chamber.
Skalf balled his fists impotently.
‘How will you know I have broken it with a single stroke if you’re not here to witness it?’ he called to his master’s departing shadow.
‘I will know,’ a voice echoed from the darkness. ‘You will not be able to break it any other way. I will know,’ he repeated. ‘Speak the words,’ he said, voice fading, ‘as they were taught to you. Again!’
Skalf obeyed and struck again. But the karadurak would not yield.
Vorgil had the map in his hands again. After the first hour, he’d removed his gloves. His soot-stained fingers, black beneath the nails, worried at the edges. Scratching at his head, he muttered, ‘But Fendril is an excellent mapwrought…’
Raglan had made a small fire and was keeping the flame low within a ring of stones. The dwarfs were deep, much deeper than before. A few skirmishes with a band of greenskins had whetted the dwarfs’ weapons, but little more. A chill pervaded in the gloom, worsened by the desolation of the hold around them.
‘Worse than the damn grobi, this cold.’ Raglan rubbed his arms to nurse some heat back into them.
‘Just like a Cravenhelm,’ chuntered Magnin. ‘Too long spent above the earth.’ For now, he was tired of openly mocking the hill dwarf. His sturm had been robbed by the hollowness of this low place. They’d seen other bodies on their route into the darkness of the world. Dwarf corpses. Hundreds of them. It was a bitter reminder of their faded glories and robbed the warmth from their hearts faster than any chill ever could.
‘Can you decipher your cousin’s script?’ asked the prince.
They were at the bottom of a very long and wide stairwell. It was broken in places, gaping pitfalls leading to certain doom in the blackened crags below, and made for treacherous footing. No light penetrated this deep and the only illumination came from Raglan’s fire. Its cast was weak and flickering, barely painting the flagstone basin where the dwarfs waited in greyish monochrome.
‘This is a bleak place,’ said Hegendour to no one in particular. ‘A hold hall should have blazing hearths filled with the smell of meat and beer-scent, not shadows and dust. Where is the sound of the clans, the ale songs and revelry? Where is the drone of the mines felt through the rock, in time with my beating heart-blood? Where are the dawi?’
‘Dead, brother,’ said Prince Darin softly, though Hegendour already had his answer.
Vorgil was scratching his head. He was standing between three forks. Two went off to the left and right, a third disappeared into abyssal darkness as the way ahead ended at the broken lip of the plateau.
‘Left, I think…’
The prince was firm, ‘You think or you know?’
Vorgil rolled up the map again. ‘Definitely left. I’d stake my silverlode on it.’
‘There’s a wager I’d take,’ muttered Magnin, still belligerent but glad to be on the move again.
The dwarfs were gathering up their gear and dousing the fire when Skalf gestured for stillness. The slow scrape of blades and hammers slipping from their sheaths sounded. The taut string of Raglan’s crossbow creaked as he loaded a quarrel.
‘What is it, lad?’ asked Prince Darin.
‘Can’t you hear that?’
He was standing at the left fork, stooped with his ear pressed towards the darkness.
‘Hear wha–’
The stink arrived before the din. It was noisome and thick, like tar.
Magnin sneered. ‘Grobi…’
A high-pitched chittering overwhelmed the greenskin grunts and whooping.
‘And something else,’ said Prince Darin.
‘How many?’ asked Raglan as he tried to target something in the blackness. His breath was coming quickly and fogged the cold, subterranean air in white gusts.
The opening was wide enough for all of the dwarfs to stand abreast of one another. They did so, shoulders together and shields uplifted.
‘Scared of a few rat-kin, elf-friend?’ said Magnin.
‘Bring the lantern forwards.’ Ignoring the bickering thanes, Prince Darin waved Vorgil up.
The shrieking and grunting in the blackness was almost deafening. The stink made the dwarfs want to retch but all held their nerve as the runic flame drew back the veil of darkness.
‘Grimnir’s hairy arse…’ Vorgil spoke for them all.
There were hordes.
It was difficult to discern greenskin from skaven they were clustered so close together. Red-eyed, swathed in dirty black robes and cowls, the goblins were in the vanguard. No, that wasn’t right… The greenskins were panicked, shrieking in agitation and fear. They were running from the ratmen who were almost on top of them. Whickering arrows, loosed blindly from bent short bows, met slung stones and hurled daggers. The efforts of the goblin archers were in vain as the teeming skaven hordes overwhelmed them in a bloody instant of hacking blades. Some of the greenskins, the better armoured or simply more desperate, resisted. Together, the creatures almost boiled towards the archway with teeth champing and weapons flashing. Green, leathery flesh, hook-nosed and cruel; black-furred, mange-ridden and cunning, the goblins and skaven were almost intertwined, kicking, biting and cutting at each with crude blades and spears.
Creatures were dying in the frantic charge, mostly goblins but the greenskins were killing skaven in their frantic f
ervour to escape too. Gore and blood spattered both warring parties as bodies were opened up and left to spill loose in the carnage. The vermin rolled towards the dwarfs in a wave. No thin line of shields was going to break it up. It would wash from the left archway and spill over onto the plateau. Anything caught in that swell would be smashed aside, possibly over the edge and into the waiting abyss.
Prince Darin saw the danger.
‘Retreat, into the other chamber!’
‘The gatekeepers flee from nothing,’ snapped Magnin, ramming his massive shield into the earth and bracing himself behind it.
Hegendour seized him firmly by the shoulder. ‘You’ll flee for this. Obey the Prince of Azgal.’
The others were already withdrawing across the plateau and making for the portal behind them.
Magnin looked as if he was about to resist but then grunted and tramped noisily after the rest.
The dwarfs had barely breached the second chamber, a dilapidated hold hall much like everywhere else in Karak Azgal, when the first of the goblins burst through the cracked entranceway.
Magnin crushed the skull of one that made the mistake of getting close enough to his mattock. He rolled a second up the front of his shield and slammed it into a broken half column jutting from the flagstone floor. Its pulped body peeled away and was lost amongst the tramp of booted feet.
Falling back on instinct, the other dwarfs rallied around him, creating a circular wall of shields and weapons that faced in every direction. Only Raglan, who didn’t carry a shield, stood apart from the wall of iron. He scaled a shattered statue that provided a high vantage point over the chamber and used his crossbow to pick off stragglers. He sent an iron-bolt into the eye of a skaven thrall-leader, punching most of the creature’s brain out of the back of its skull in a welter of gore. He pinioned a goblin through the neck, spinning the greenskin with the impact and cutting off its straggled death cry.
At the core of the ring of dwarfs, Vorgil’s lantern shone out like a beacon. He’d attached it by a length of chain to a spare axe he had sheathed on his back and it swung wildly, creating bizarre and monstrous shadows, as he fought with his rune pick.
