The doom of dragonback, p.28
The Doom of Dragonback, page 28
The first fires lit up the western slope, silhouetting the angular frames of bolt throwers and trebuchets before they too were set alight. The ruddy sparks of firebombs arced through the darkness, splashing into fiery blossoms as they hit.
The goblins were slow to rouse and the flames had crept nearly a hundred paces back towards the road before the first of them woke. Soon the mountainside was alive with small figures dashing to and fro, screeching and fighting, split between trying to get away from the danger and being punched and whipped into action by their orc overseers.
The crackle and pop of burning timber and tarred rope was soon loud enough to obscure any noise made by the dwarfs. Skraffi held up his hand. ‘Get your first bombs ready,’ he told them.
Unfortunately, although there was less danger of the dwarfs being heard, the light from the burgeoning fires was spreading to the road. In the flicker of red and orange, the dwarfs would become sitting targets. Gabbik realised this as the light grew brighter and brighter. The closest goblins were intent upon the action further up the slope, where short figures could be seen sprinting back to the road, but it was only a matter of time before they turned their attention to foes closer at hand.
‘Up and at them!’ Gabbik shouted, lighting the fuse of his first firebomb. He ran at the engines another dozen paces and hefted the sphere as hard as he could. He did not wait to see if it hit before slinging off his pack and snatching another bomb. Lighting the fuse he stood up and saw the other dwarfs nearby pelting fire at the closest machines. In the growing blaze, the dwarfs were as plain to see as in daylight. Some of the goblins had bows, and flimsy arrows started to snick and skitter from the slabs and cut the air near Gabbik’s head. A crossbow quarrel and an arrow from a couple of the rangers snapped back in return, each shot pitching a goblin to the ground with a shaft in its chest.
Gabbik threw another bomb, aiming for longer this time. The globe shattered next to a catapult, spraying liquid across the goblins using its frame as cover. Moments later the vapours lit from the sparking fuse and a handful of greenskins reared up ablaze, shrieking and running in circles in their torment.
Gabbik had two more globes, and their orders had been not to fall back until they had thrown every one. Matters were progressing quickly though. There were wolf riders on the far side of the road, wary of the flames that were now spread halfway across the valley, but soon enough they would pluck up the courage to give chase. Added to that, the wyverns would surely not be far away for long.
He glanced to his right and saw Haldora lighting the fuse on a bomb, her face a mask of concentration in the flare of light. Smoke was starting to thicken across the road and Gabbik lost sight of the goblins for a moment as the wind whipped the smog around, backing upon the flames. There was no way to tell if the counterattack was imminent or might have already begun. There was no more time to waste.
‘Kruk,’ Gabbik said to himself, closing his pack on the two remaining bombs. He threw his bag over one shoulder and broke into a run, raising his voice. ‘Come on, back to the sally port! Quick now!’
Haldora lobbed one more firebomb and followed, as did several others. A few remained to cast the last of their globes at the engines, but Gabbik spared them no more attention. He reached the wall, breathless, and waited for Haldora to join him. Helping her over the bricks, he vaulted to the slope beyond and started forging up through the scrub. By the light of the fires the ascent was swifter than the descent had been and they quickly negotiated the rocks and scrubby bushes that barred their way.
Another light, paler than fire, gleamed from the mountainside ahead. Someone had reached the secret portal and the door had opened. Risking looks to his left and right, Gabbik saw other dwarfs half-climbing the slope, running when they could, scrambling up on all fours when necessary. More crooked arrows splintered on the rocks around them as the goblins found their range and the howl of chasing wolves swept Gabbik to a new surge of speed.
He slowed enough to make sure Haldora crossed the doorway first, and looked back for Skraffi. The old dwarf was still about a hundred paces back. Goblins were just a couple of dozen yards behind, far nimbler over the broken terrain.
Cursing, Gabbik realised he couldn’t abandon his father. He dashed back down the slope, dragging off his pack as he did so. Pausing beside a rock, he put a sparking tinder to the canvas, lighting the pack itself before throwing it overarm at the incoming goblins. Skraffi saw him and changed his course, angling directly for the door as the firebombs exploded behind him. Gabbik did not know if he had killed any greenskins, but it had scattered them well enough.
‘You’re getting a knack for this lark, my lad,’ said Skraffi. ‘Maybe we did raise you right, after all.’
‘Shut up and keep running,’ Gabbik snapped, pushing Skraffi in front of him up the slope.
Panting, they reached a ring of rangers defending the secret door with slings and bows. These warriors loosed a last volley at the pursuing greenskins and together they all made a final dash for the opening, stumbling and crashing through the doorway one after the other, until it swung shut by a barked command from the runesmith within.
Menghir appeared from deeper in the hall.
‘How many?’ he snapped at Thaggrin.
‘I counted them in myself,’ said the runesmith. ‘Eight less than went out.’
‘Eight…’ Menghir looked as though the dead had numbered ten, even a hundred times that. ‘Another eight, for a few days more.’
‘Every day will count, with winter coming,’ said the runesmith, turning away from the portal. ‘There might come a time when we all wish for a handful of days more.’
Chapter Twenty
‘The mining continued, at Ankor-Drakk and further up the mountain, for many years. Then one day a messenger arrived from Karak Eight Peaks, and the king was reminded that his offer of coal had now run its course. The contract was finished, so to say.
The messenger claimed that Grimbalki, as descendant of the old kings of Karak Eight Peaks, was still subject to the rule of their chosen king. That meant that he would be allowed to continue as the King of the Dragonbacks, but would have to send a tithe of their coal to the homeland to secure his position of royalty.
To nobody’s surprise at all, Grimbalki gave the messenger a clip round the head and told him there was more chance of him letting an elf have his mines than some gold-grubbing goat fart from the old mountains.
So it was that Dragonback asserted its independence, and the day was marked each year after with the Freedom feast, where lots of goat’s cheese was eaten in memory of the king’s message.’
Although the raid lessened the bombardment from the greenskins, in all likelihood it hastened the fall of the bastion. The remaining goblin war engines continued to loose rocks and bolts upon the walls for another day, but during the night that followed the rams and siege towers were brought up once more. With few engines to destroy the siege towers, the order from the king was for the few remaining dwarfs of Lord Garudak to give way on the walls and pull back from the bastion to the Lower Gate.
By midday the bastion was crawling with goblins and orcs. The wyverns returned, terrorising the dwarfs on the ramparts around the main gatehouse, while giants with tree trunk clubs and boulders battered at the timbers of the Lower Gate.
Haldora and the other Angboks had been evacuated from the lower parts of the hold along with most of the other dwarfs – only the warriors of Clan Garudak and a few others contested the Lower Gate. Instead of fighting, she watched the loss of the bastion from another rampart a few hundred paces further up the valley. Those dwarfs not directly defending their homes had been stationed on the line of towers and walls about a third of the way between the bastion and the South Gate, near the fortress of Kundazad-a-Zorn. Dwarfs from central Ekrund manned the citadel itself.
Word came in the middle of the afternoon that the Lower Gate was now fully abandoned. The runes upon the gate and the bars across it still held, but the orcs had broken through several of the lesser portals further down the valley, and with the bastion in their hands there was no way to defend the outer part of the hold from without and within.
As the evening fires were being lit, grim-faced survivors of the withdrawal joined the companies stationed on the next line, Menghir amongst them. Haldora handed the lordling a mug of broth as he sighed heavily and leaned on the battlements looking southwards. Curls of black smoke rose from the window-shafts and lesser gates as the orcs torched the Lower Gate.
‘Generations to fashion, days to lose,’ said Menghir, with another long sigh. He accepted the broth with a weak smile. ‘I fear it will take more than mutton soup to warm my heart for a long time.’
‘It can be built again,’ said Haldora. ‘As long as we survive and prevail we can carve new halls and raise new gates.’
‘True enough.’ Though Menghir’s words shared her optimism his expression was bleak. ‘We took what treasure we could, but there are vaults there still where the wealth of ancients is hid. That cannot be recovered once taken.’
The rest of the night passed slowly, as the campfires of the orcs crept closer, engulfing the bastion and Lower Gate. The approaches to the South Gate took a turn to the west above the fortifications where the Angboks were stationed, so that Haldora could not see further up the valley from where they were. Wolf riders and forest goblins on spiders infiltrated along the western and northern mountainside, and from there they gained access to the upper pastures.
They brought fire and ruin to the Vornazak Zorn, burning orchards and timber groves, despoiling the goat meadows and the tilled farmland. The smog of the destruction hung about the peak of Mount Bloodhorn and drifted north across the Dragonbacks.
‘My poor bees!’ Skraffi lamented, tugging in frustration at his beard. ‘It’s a grim day when a dwarf cannot raise his axe in defence of his bees!’
Goats and other livestock had been brought in, but the speed of the orc advance and the lack of warning meant that crops had been left in the fields. There was no room for hives inside the hold.
‘More woe,’ said Menghir, who had taken to keeping watch with the Angboks while his father attended the councils of the king. ‘I think it is not chance that brought this horde upon us before the harvest time. Our store rooms are at their emptiest, the silos and breweries holding the last of the spring grain.’
‘We can tighten belts better than any greenskin,’ said Gabbik. ‘The winter will prove a harsher enemy to them than us.’
‘But they do not take what they could use themselves,’ said Skraffi. ‘They burn but do not pillage. There is no intent for them to wait until winter.’
‘It doesn’t matter what they intend,’ said Haldora. ‘The gates will hold and they will starve.’
‘The goblins, perhaps, but the orcs will feed on the lesser creatures,’ said Menghir. ‘They might last until the snows come.’
‘Then let us hope that the snows come early,’ said Skraffi.
For several days it seemed the orcs would repeat their plan of bombardment, as they moved their remaining engines up the valley towards the main gate. These were supplemented by fresh constructions, built using timber stolen from the upland stores by the groves, though as the dwarf carpenters pointed out, this wood was still too green for such work. It did not seem to bother the greenskins as they laboured making fresh war engines, using this pilfered wood and whatever they could scavenge from the half-burned wrecks of their old machines and the remnants of the Ekrund batteries.
The following night, however, before any new stone had been hurled at the walls, the orcs came at the towers and walls in siege engines and with tall ladders and long ropes. Haldora was roused from her sleep by the horns of the hold sounding the alarm.
She snatched up shield and axe – always close to hand – and with the others off-duty she dashed out onto the ramparts. She could see little, for the smoke of the fires swathed the stars and the orcs had approached under the cover of this darkness without torch or lamp.
This time it was not the goblins that came first, but the toughest, largest of the orcs, including the black orcs from the Dark Lands. These were a far more fearsome prospect than wildlands goblins and spider riders. Haldora’s mouth was dry as she watched hundreds of the brutal creatures massing between the rocks below, pushing ladders up from the foot of the wall.
The dwarfs pushed back the ladders where they could and rained down firebombs, burning oil and stones. There were no crossbows though, for the order had been to conserve arrows and bolts for the defence of the main gate. Instead slings and hand catapults tossed stones and lead bullets at the armoured greenskins.
Ladders crashed against the wall to the left and right. The orcs swarmed up them like ants on a branch as the dwarfs tried their best to push them back. The weight of the greenskins made shifting the ladders difficult once there were any number of orcs on them, so Haldora ran back and forth helping out as best she could with those ladders still arriving.
She found Nakka standing between two ladders, a double-bladed axe in his hands. Black orcs were clambering up on each side, cleaver-like blades in their fists, iron-bound shields held up to protect against the shower of projectiles raining down. In the brief flare of flashbombs and fire globes she saw snarling, bestial faces and red eyes filled with hateful intent.
The first orcs to reach the top of the wall were greeted by the axes of the waiting dwarfs. Nakka’s axe swung left and right, hewing down a greenskin to each side with every blow. Haldora battered away at the shield of another orc as it tried to pull itself over the battlement. She saw an opening as it stepped into the embrasure, and cut its leg off at the knee with one downward chop. Howling, the orc toppled back, bouncing off the following greenskin before disappearing into the gloom.
A blade snapped out towards Haldora, sparking from the stone beside her head with a loud clang. Other dwarfs threw the orc back with axes and hammers, and the one after. A shout warned of more orcs reaching the rampart to the left. Haldora found herself at the front of the counterattack as two burly black orcs vaulted over the battlements, each carrying a pair of blades.
She brought up her shield as the first orc leapt towards her. Its blow almost broke her arm, splitting the shield through the metal rim and a hand’s span of wood, the tip of the blade missing Haldora’s ear by a fine margin. The force of the strike knocked her backwards and she was only kept upright by the press of dwarfs behind her, who surged past, battering and chopping madly.
Haldora almost fainted, realising how close she had been to that orc blade cutting her throat or cleaving her skull.
She was just a stupid girl playing at being a warrior, no match for the beasts that were pushing their way onto the top of the wall. Awdhelga had killed a few goblins but she had never faced black orcs nor the monstrous elite of the greenskin wildlands tribes that would be following.
‘Are ye gonna fight or watch, lass?’ barked someone beside her. She didn’t recognise him, but his black beard was matted with thick orc blood and his hammer smeared with the same.
‘Get the kettle on, dear,’ said another, ‘if you want to be useful. This is going to be thirsty work.’
They didn’t mean anything by it, they really didn’t, but their dismissive attitude was like a firebox to the fuse of a bomb. Haldora was not going to be treated like that, not by anybody.
‘Durazut Angbok karak!’ she screamed, breaking into a run.
She buried her first axe swing between the shoulders of an orc looming over a wounded dwarf by the parapet. Dragging the blade free she chopped again, severing its spine just above the waist. She thrust her shield out to catch a swinging maul and then swept her axe low, cracking open her attacker’s shins.
After that the melee became a blur of snarling faces, splashing blood and tireless axe strokes.
The attack was relentless for three whole days and the dwarfs equally tenacious in their defence. When the orcs finally withdrew, the goblins came. When the goblins withdrew, the giants and ogres assaulted with rams and towers, sending trolls ahead to soften up the defenders. And when they were finally beaten back, the orcs came again.
Eventually the enemy warlord called a halt to the assaults, pulling back its forces behind log ramparts and earthworks that had been thrown up under the cover of the attack. Protected by fascines and walls of dirt-filled sacks, the engines resumed their pounding, targeting the defences on the dog-leg of the valley from the opposite side.
The orc and goblin dead were piled up beneath the walls and towers, in some places so deep that later assaults had simply clambered up the corpse ramps to attack. Dwarf teams with long poles and hooked ropes did their best to pull down these piles, but they had to work in short bursts – any group that spent a lengthy amount of time on the walls was targeted by boulders and bolts, while spider riders scuttled closer and unleashed flurries of barb-tipped arrows.
The forest goblins became more problematic as it was discovered that their missiles were coated with spider venom. Most of those hit by these envenomed arrows survived, but it brought a debilitated state – fever and partial paralysis – and sometimes delirium.
Skraffi felt as if he could sleep for five days straight, having fought for the whole of the latest assault. Sleep would not come though, as the tormented grunts and moans of the poisoned dwarfs conspired with the fireside chants of ogres and greenskins to keep him awake.
It was with some relief that Gabbik came to him in the ruddy twilight before dawn and told him that they had been summoned to the king’s court again.
‘I don’t know what hare-brained mission they have for us this time,’ confessed Gabbik.
‘Only one way to find out,’ said Skraffi.
‘What about Haldora? She would want to come too.’
‘She’s helping her mother,’ said Skraffi, ‘doling out gruel to the wounded in the lower towers.’
