The end times, p.44
The End Times, page 44
The king tried to look away, but was arrested by the Slayer’s eyes. Beautiful eyes, set into a face scarred by cuts and inner pain. They were out of place, clear blue as ice, and as devoid of emotion.
Belegar tugged at his beard and cleared his throat. He waved his hand over his maps.
‘I’m loath to let such fine warriors go out. I need every axe we have here.’
Unfer glanced at the maps like they were a carpet he had no interest in buying, and Belegar an overeager merchant. ‘That is not the nature of our oath, my lord. We have no desire to retreat until there is nowhere left to retreat to, to find our doom backed into some corner, or worse, to be taken alive. There is no hope in this defence. Let us go, and kill as many of them as we can for you. It is a service we gladly offer you.’
Unfer’s glacial gaze bored into Belegar’s eyes. The insult to the king’s ability as a general was implicit.
‘There is always hope,’ said Belegar. ‘Help might come yet.’ He heard the desperation in his own voice; he was afraid that the Slayer was right.
‘There is no hope left in all the Karaz Ankor. No one is coming. The Eternal Realm is finished. Best we all shave our heads and take the oath so that we might die with a song on our lips and our shame washed away in blood.’
‘Shame?’ said Belegar. Unfer shrugged shoulders craggy with muscle. Blue tattoos writhed over them. In hands like boulders, he carried paired rune axes – royal weapons. Belegar often wondered who he’d been. Unfer would never tell.
‘The shame of all our kind,’ said Unfer. ‘That we have failed to restore the glory of our ancestors. Better to fight. Better to wish for a good death than a ragged hope.’
Belegar was tempted. To sally out with his remaining few folk, and kill the thaggoraki until they themselves were killed. Let them taste dawi steel and remember them forever!
He blinked visions of a glorious end away. He could not. He was a king. He had responsibilities. He had a son, the first heir born to the king of Karak Eight Peaks since its fall two thousand years ago. He would not retreat. He would not abandon the legacy of his ancestors, so much dearer now it was the heritage of another.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We wait here. We will defend, and retreat, and defend. And we shall prevail.’
Disappointment flickered over Unfer’s face. ‘As you wish. It is your kingdom.’ The Slayer put one axe over each shoulder and turned away.
‘I have not finished,’ said Belegar sternly. ‘You have my permission to go,’ he added with understanding. ‘I cannot keep you from your oaths. What manner of king would I be if I did? I wish you would reconsider, but if you must, you have my leave. Fight well, and find the doom you deserve, Unfer.’
Unfer nodded once. ‘It is all any of us can hope for any more. Grimnir go with you, King Belegar. If we meet again, may it be in happier times for all dawi.’
‘You’ll not go yet,’ said Belegar. Unfer cast a weary look over his shoulder. The Slayer moved in the way those with deep depression do: slowly, as if through a treacle of despair. ‘I may be a poor king, but I’m still a king. You’ll get a proper send off. I’ll open my cellars to you, we’ll say the right words, drink to your deaths.’ He smiled awkwardly. ‘The old way.’
Unfer gave an appreciative bow. ‘Let no dawi say that King Belegar is ungenerous. It is good to hold to the old ways while we still can.’
‘Aye,’ said Belegar. ‘Aye, it is.’ He meant it as a good thing, but his troubled face said otherwise. All they had was the past, he thought, and even that was running away from them.
He didn’t notice Unfer leave. A commotion at the gates drew his tired eyes. One of the Iron Brotherhood, Skallguz the Short, was pushing his way through. He jogged up to his lord, red faced and out of breath.
‘My king!’ he said, and dropped to his knees.
‘What is it?’ said Belegar.
‘It is the queen, my lord. The prince…’ The dwarf stammered to a halt.
‘Spit it out!’ Belegar’s face went pale with terrible presentiment.
‘My lord,’ the dwarf said. ‘I don’t know how to say it… They’ve both gone!’
CHAPTER NINE
KEMMA’S WAY
Wind sang sadly through the teeth of the broken window, set in the dairy, high up in the side of Kvinn-wyr. A sheer drop of four thousand feet fell away down the mountain outside, ending in broad fans of scree covered by snow. Gromvarl pulled his head back in through mullions worn edgeless by the wind and rain, and leaned against a cracked milk trough. He shook the snow from his shaggy mane of hair and filled his pipe.
He winced at the taste of the tobacco. Once the dwarfs had produced the world’s finest smoking weed in the Great Vale, along with much else. The soil of the bowl cupped between the eight mountains was so rich they called it Brungal – brown gold. In Belegar’s pocket kingdom there had been plans, and much talk in ale cups, of how the dwarfs were going to clear the farmlands and raise great crops to end Vala-Azrilungol’s reliance on the other holds. Of course, like so much Belegar said, it remained an unattainable dream.
A stealthy tread sounded in the old goat way outside. Gromvarl brought his crossbow up one-handed, wincing as he rested the stock in the crook of his broken arm.
He narrowed his eyes, finger on the trigger lever, then relaxed. No skaven or grobi whistled like that.
A deeply tanned dwarf with an expression so cheerful it belonged on the face of no real dawi came in through the door. He doffed his wide-brimmed hat, showing the scarf tied tightly over his ears and under his chin. His name was Douric Grimlander, a dwarf reckoner, a calculator of debts and grudges. Little better than a mercenary, to Gromvarl’s eyes.
‘Gromvarl! What happened to you?’ Douric said, his eyes lighting on Gromvarl’s splinted arm.
‘An urk happened to it. And then I happened to the urk.’
Douric peered about the small dairy. ‘You alone then?’
‘What does it look like?’ said Gromvarl through teeth gripping his pipe. He had always found Douric insufferable, even at the best of times.
‘I told you he’d say no,’ said Douric breezily. ‘I suppose it’s all off then. Belegar’s a fool to turn your offer down, but that’s that.’
‘Listen to me, you scraggle-bearded wazzok,’ said Gromvarl. ‘Why do you think he said no? This is his hold. Thorgrim is his son and heir.’ Gromvarl fixed the shorter dwarf with a beady eye and poked him in the chest with his pipe stem. ‘I wonder if you’re a real dwarf at all. You’ve no honour.’
Douric took the insult as a compliment, or so his broad smile suggested. ‘I like money. You like money. Who doesn’t like money? I have honour, but like my money, I’m just a little more careful than you where I spend it, that’s all.’
Gromvarl grunted, wiped the mouthpiece of his pipe on his bearskin, which was no cleaner than Douric’s jerkin, and replaced it in his mouth with the clack of ivory on teeth. ‘Oaths are worth more than gold, reckoner.’
‘I keep mine, unlike your king,’ said the reckoner mildly. ‘If I combine honour with payment, does it make me all that bad? Besides,’ he said, hitching his hands into his wide belt. ‘You’re the one who suggested to the king we should steal the queen out of the city against all tradition. So where’s your honour?’
Gromvarl adjusted the sling holding his broken arm, sliding thick fingers between the fabric and his neck. ‘My oath has always been to protect the queen, ever since she was a child. I’m doing that now.’
‘Doing that…?’ Douric’s eyes widened. ‘Oh ho ho! Gromvarl! I didn’t think you had it in you. She is here isn’t she?’
‘Not yet,’ said Gromvarl grudgingly. ‘Soon.’
‘Handing her over to me! A mere mercenary. Tut tut, Gromvarl. You’ll be coming with us now, I’ll warrant. It’ll be a mite uncomfortable down there once Belegar finds you’ve kidnapped his son.’ Douric jerked his thumb over his shoulder, back down the passageway in the exact direction of the citadel. Douric always had had a fine sense of direction, even for a dwarf.
Gromvarl grumbled, levered himself up from the tub and took a heavy step forwards, until he was nose to nose with Douric. ‘I’ve other oaths, oaths of service to the king. I’ll not break either. I need a dwarf of your… moral flexibility.’ He looked the reckoner up and down, his grubby clothes, his odd umgak gear garnered from who knew where. He was right, this was no true dwarf.
‘So you’re in a bind, then? Who’s the more fortunate here – you, all thick with responsibility, or me, who tends to the more cautious side–’
‘Self-serving more like,’ interjected Gromvarl.
‘–of things?’ continued Douric, undeterred. ‘A philosophy that enables me to help you out now. Who else would, Gromvarl? Who’s the better?’ He waggled his eyebrows in almost lewd fashion.
‘You little krutwanaz…’
‘Will you two stop arguing? The pair of you, thicker-headed than trolls!’ A sharp female voice speared out of the corridor. Queen Kemma of Karak Eight Peaks emerged into the dairy. She was followed by a very young dwarf, no older than ten or twelve, whose chin was covered in the straggly hairs of first bearding, and a hammerer, who nervously glanced behind them. Both the queen and youngster wore travelling cloaks and the rough clothes favoured by the kruti and foresters who worked overground. When the queen pushed past Gromvarl, her fastenings parted slightly, revealing rich gromril mail beneath. Both of them too had a royal bearing. Gromvarl sighed. No matter how they dressed up, there was no hiding who they were. He just hoped they had not been seen sneaking away.
‘I am sorry, vala,’ said Gromvarl, who at least had the decency to look abashed. He cast his eyes downwards. Douric, on the other hand, arched his back, and clasped his hands behind his back, an exceptionally self-satisfied look on his face.
The hammerer rubbed at his bulbous nose. ‘Here they are. I better get back.’
‘Another oath-bender!’ said Douric. ‘They’re popping up like mushrooms.’
‘Guard the queen as long as she is in Karak Eight Peaks, that was my oath. Well now she’s not,’ said the hammerer. ‘Nearly.’
‘You’re a good dawi, Bronk Coppermaster,’ said Gromvarl. He held up a small purse, distastefully pinched between finger and thumb, as if it were soiled. ‘For your trouble.’
Bronk looked at it in horror. ‘You’ve been hanging around with these here reckoners too long. Just see her safe, that’s all I want. If this ends well, then I’ll take my chances with Belegar, and we’ll still have our prince. If it doesn’t end well… Well,’ he shrugged, his gromril rattling musically, ‘then it’s not going to matter very much what Belegar thinks.’
Gromvarl nodded. ‘I look forward to fighting alongside you, Bronk.’
Bronk nodded and hurried off back up the passageway.
Meanwhile, Douric was attempting his charm upon the queen. ‘Vala Kemma! It has been too long. With every passing year your beauty grows greater.’ He bowed his head and reached for her hand.
‘Don’t even think about it, reckoner,’ said Kemma, snatching her fingers back from his puckered lips. ‘We have to be away now.’
‘Mother, are we sure this is the right thing to do?’ said Thorgrim. ‘I am the prince of Karak Eight Peaks, my place should be here. Father will be furious.’
Kemma placed her hands on his shoulders, and looked up into his face. Not yet full grown, he was already turning into a fine figure of a dwarf. He was already three feet tall; chances were he was going to be bigger than his father, and certainly as strong. Bryndalmoraz Karakal they called him – the bright hope of the mountains.
‘I am taking you to be safe, my son. Is it not your first responsibility to preserve the royal bloodline?’
Prince Thorgrim’s young face twisted with inner conflict. ‘But I am the prince, mother. I will not be an oathbreaker.’
‘You have taken no oaths,’ soothed his mother, stroking the lines on his face. ‘If you did not believe us to be doing the right thing, then you would have stayed behind. We have already come so far.’
The prince looked doubtful and bit his lip, causing the fuzz of growing beard to puff up. He nodded in what was intended to be a decisive manner, but Gromvarl saw he was still unsure. He was brave for a boy of his age.
‘Very well,’ said Thorgrim.
‘King Belegar for a father and that one there for his mother, I don’t envy that youngster,’ said Douric quietly.
‘You’re not wrong there,’ Gromvarl replied as the queen and prince talked. ‘But he’s almost past all that. He’ll be his own master soon, mark my words. He’s got a strong head, that boy, but with her temperament, thank Valaya. The last thing Karak Eight Peaks needs is another Belegar.’
‘I’m not sure the queen’s temperament is necessarily an improvement,’ said Douric.
Gromvarl snorted.
Strange noises sounded from deep in the mountain.
‘We best be away, vala. These tunnels were much fractured in the time of Great Cataclysm. They are unsafe. No one knows where they go,’ said Douric.
Kemma’s face crinkled with bitterness. ‘There is nowhere safe in Karak Eight Peaks – there never has been. I should have left as soon as Thorgrim was born.’ She reached into her robes. Douric held up his hand.
‘Payment upon safe delivery, or my word is not my bond,’ he said. ‘Best say your farewells.’ Douric tactfully withdrew, drawing the prince after him to leave Kemma alone with her guardian.
Gromvarl gave his queen a bow. He huffed on his pipe like a steam engine building power, filling the dairy with smoke.
‘Well, I suppose this is goodbye.’
‘Brave Gromvarl. Are you sure you will not come with us?’
‘Not with this, vala,’ said Gromvarl, lifting his broken arm. ‘And even without, I’d have to stay. You know why.’
Kemma smiled her understanding. ‘I lack the words to thank you for all that you’ve done for me.’ She leaned through the clouds around him and laid a gentle kiss on his old cheek.
‘It’s not necessary! Get on with you now, young lady,’ said Gromvarl, his voice inexplicably warbly. He coughed. ‘Damned tobacco making my eyes water! I’d give my other arm for a pouch of Everpeak Goldleaf.’
Douric led on up the passage, a krut ungdrin, where in better days herds of goats had been driven from their pastures to be milked and overwintered. They went through ways long forgotten, winding up the secret stair to a door high up on the shoulders of Kvinn-wyr.
‘Be careful, my lady, my prince,’ said Douric. ‘It’s cold and mighty windy out.’
This proved to be something of an understatement. The three of them were buffeted by a howling gale that drove needles of snow into their faces. The path they found themselves on went down steadily towards alpine pastures arrayed on the mountain’s shoulders. Rusted spikes of ancient iron in the rock showed where a safety line had once been anchored, but it was a distant memory. The three of them clung on to the stone for dear life until they turned a corner onto the southern flank of the mountain, where the wind dropped to strong gusts that plucked at their clothes, petulant at its lost power.
‘That’s the worst bit, for now,’ said Douric.
‘You know this way well?’ said Kemma.
‘I know all ways well, my lady. A reckoner’s not a reckoner if he can’t get in or out of a place where reckoning needs doing. Those with debts are generally shy, retiring sorts. They can be a little tricky to dig out,’ he said with a grin.
They went through high fields well above the tree line. Subject to the caprices of the wind, much of the snow had been blown from them, gathering in huge drifts against broken dry-stone walls and the cairns of piled rocks cleared from the fields by the ancestors. Tumbledown shacks marked the refuges of goatherds, and in one place the walls of a ruined village made straight, soft lines in the snow. All was abandoned, as everything was in the Eight Peaks. Here, however, there had recently been dwarfs tending flocks. The signs of recent occupation were visible in places, especially near other krut ungdrin. Once again, the pastures were empty.
Kemma found it hard to believe, but not so long ago there was an optimism to Karak Eight Peaks, a sense that things were turning for the better. Another cruel joke, and one she had never fallen for herself. This had always been a fool’s errand, and in Belegar the errand had found its fool. Nevertheless, she was a dwarf, and the ruination upset her as much as any other. She had never told anyone, but this was why she hated Vala-Azrilungol so much. Every inch of it was a shameful reminder of what her people had lost.
Douric hadn’t looked back at them the whole time they’d been outside; if he did she hoped he’d think her tears were brought forth by the biting wind and not from sorrow.
At one corner, they passed a collection of dwarf beard scalps, frozen stiff in the wind and rattling against their posts. ‘Thorgrim! Look away!’ she said. Her son did not heed her, and gawped at them. Anguish pulsed in her breast that he had to see such things, but it hardened her resolve. This was why they had to leave.
As they threaded their way through a series of terraced fields, the air grew thicker and it became easier to breathe. The tall white finger of Kvinn-wyr, cloaked in winter snow from peak to skirts, raised itself behind them. They were hidden from the feeble sun, trudging through a world of shadow and ice.
‘Soon we must go back inside,’ said Douric. ‘Through another way. We can rest a while at its head before we press on.’ He said this for the benefit of Thorgrim, who had a long way yet to go before he developed the full width of his thighs. He was trying his hardest to hide his discomfort like a good dawi, but his pale face and trembling lips told another story.
