The doom of dragonback, p.5
The Doom of Dragonback, page 5
‘Who is the wiser wazzock, my friend? The wazzock or the wazzock that follows a wazzock?’ Skraffi closed his eyes for a moment and wavered, gently swaying. It was only then that Haldora realised just how into his cups he was.
‘Do something,’ she whispered, leaning in close to her father. ‘That mead’s stronger than any ale and he’s had a pail-full.’
‘Let him be, he’s old enough to know his mind,’ Gabbik replied.
‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ said Haldora as a chorus of shushing surrounded her from the rest of the table.
‘Get on with it!’ someone called out from the crowd.
‘That’s jus’ the problem, ain’t it now?’ said Skraffi. ‘We’s all getting on with it, ain’t we? Busy as bee-bees just buzzing away beating about our buzziness… um, business. Not looking up, not seeing what’s happening. Did you hear?’ Mead sloshed from the ewer as Skraffi threw a hand towards Njellon. ‘Karak Varn is no more!’
The whispers and chuckles stopped; in their place grumbles and growls and a few moans of denial. The ranger reluctantly nodded and there were more groans.
‘And we lost good dwarfs today. Diligent hard-working lads you’d be happy to share a seam and an ale with.’
‘May Valaya guide them to the halls,’ someone called out, and this was repeated earnestly around the brew hall. Skraffi took another swig of mead, direct from the jug.
‘And Grimnir sharpen their axes,’ Skraffi added darkly, peering at the groups around each table. His eyes met Haldora’s and she smiled weakly, but her grandfather’s expression stayed grim. ‘You want to be like Gramma Awdie, my lovely Haldi?’
‘Haldora,’ she replied, infuriated that she had been brought into this display.
‘She was great because she looked further than the rest of us. She saw what’s what and when’s when, and if she were here now she’d be telling us the same. I’m not half as wise as she was…’
‘Nor half as handsome!’ shouted Fleinn.
‘…but I can smell tunnel-fume and know when not to be striking matches. There’s fume aplenty these days. A big cloud of it, rolling down the old mountains.’
‘That’s a long way away, you old drunkard!’ called out one of the Losthons.
The locals turned as one and glared their disapproval. Skraffi was certainly a batty old drunk, but the Angboks, Burlithroms, Grimssons and Troggklads were not going to let some stranger from the other side of the Third Deeps come to their halls and start throwing around insults. The interloper shrank behind his ale tankard, almost disappearing beneath the table to avoid the sudden scrutiny.
‘You’re barred.’
The two words were softly spoken by Fulnir but they carried across the hall as though bellowed. A tide of sharp intakes of breath and tutting followed, until the shame-faced dwarf rose from the bench and slunk away.
When the disgraced dwarf disappeared from view Skraffi looked around at his audience, one eye screwed up in concentration.
‘Wha’ was I sayin’?’
‘Mead!’ cried out Fleinn.
‘Tha’s right! Mead!’ A big grin split the old dwarf’s beard. ‘Stuff of the ancestors, believe me. You should all be drinking mead. It puts hairs on your chin and in your ears and up your nose and…’
He mumbled something else and started to teeter. Gabbik got up and offered up a shoulder for support but Skraffi waved his son away.
‘I miss your mam,’ Skraffi said loudly, in what he probably thought was a whisper. ‘Finest ladydwarf I ever knew.’
‘Let’s get back to the halls and we’ll raise another cup to her,’ said Haldora, slipping her arm around Skraffi.
Between them, Gabbik and Haldora led Skraffi to the door, with a few uncertain diversions around tables and sleeping dwarfs on the way. When they reached the doorway Skraffi forced them to turn around so that he could see his audience once more.
The other dwarfs were keen to show appreciation of the things they liked, and one of the things they really liked was another dwarf being entertaining whilst far drunker than them. Somebody started clapping and soon the whole throng had taken up the applause, and then they started stamping their feet and banging the tables with their tankards.
Skraffi bowed to acknowledge his admirers, waving his mead jug. As he straightened he lost his balance and continued backwards, until he had toppled to the floor. Haldora bent over her grandfather in concern, but already the sound of gentle snoring rose to her ears.
She exchanged a wordless look with her father and they hauled Skraffi up between them. Haldora remembered just in time to wave goodbye to Nakka, who gave her a wink and a thumbs up in reply.
Chapter Four
‘Although the Angboks were the instigators of this endeavour, there were other clans who had listened to their plans and joined them in their westward move. The Troggklads, for one, were always staunch friends, and many were cousins to the Angboks. The Grimssons were also one of the first clans to leave Karak Eight Peaks, though they were less fondly considered from time to time.
Each clan had its thanes, and the thanes looked to their own for leadership, but it soon became clear that the whole expedition needed someone in charge. We like to know who to blame when things go wrong, for a start.
The Angboks thought that they were the obvious choice, having started everything. But the Grimssons conspired against them with some of the other clans, and despite the wishes of the Angboks and the Troggklads, a thane was chosen from the Brikboks. That family were put in charge and renamed themselves the Rinkeldraz, taking to themselves an air of royalty.
The Angboks, not wishing to upset the expedition on which they had set their hearts, agreed to abide by the commands of Thane Rinkeldraz for the time being, and all was well again.’
Over the days that followed Njellon Skeldram’s story was bolstered by news from other rangers: Karak Varn was no more. It was the topic of much conversation in the family chambers, in the mines and in the brew halls. When Skraffi asked Haldora for help bringing in the next batch of honey from the hives, it was an inevitable subject and reared its head just as they left by one of the minor gates.
The sun in the mountains was glorious, bathing the slopes in summer warmth, lighting the great ancestor faces carved into the cliff face over the gatehouse and striking fire in the seven immense rubies set into the archway above the open gates. In the past they had blazed with runelight in the night to guide travellers to the hold but since the war with the elves they had been dormant.
Though a subterranean people, quite capable of spending day after day underground without issue, the Ekrundfolk still had a fondness for light. Great shafts were dug into the mountainside to let starlight and sunlight into the lower deeps, while crystal-windowed galleries broke the slopes of the highest peaks around Ekrund, where dwarfs could walk and sit and gaze out at the world. Lamplight was much desired, and rune lamps that glowed with the captured dusk or dawn were highly sought after – most had been sent in trade to the elves on Ulthuan before the war had severed such ties and twilit lanterns were now a much-prized rarity. Firelight was perhaps most value, for it reminded the dwarfs of furnaces and forges, and the fires consumed their labours in the mines and in the forests and smelted good metal from rock and turned waste into warmth.
The heat of the sun on Haldora’s face was something she had always liked and she only half-listened to her grandfather’s laments about Karak Varn as they made their way up the flagged road heading towards the upper meadows where Skraffi’s apiary was located. Instead of paying attention she was wondering what it would be like to be a ranger, spending as much time above ground as under it, seeing distant shores and hillsides and visiting the Old Holds.
The road they followed cut as straight as an engineer’s rule to the south, with several smaller cobbled tracks leading off to outer towers, scenic spots and the goat pastures. The sides of the road were lined with walls thrice the height of a dwarf, holding back turfed embankments filled with beds of strong-smelling herbs. Young beardlings moved along the rows picking and plucking, filling the baskets on their backs. Haldora had done the same when she was young – though she had tended the cabbage patches by the south-western galleries – and it brought to mind not just the long summer days picking out weeds but also the colder autumn days when the winds turned eastwards and brought flurries of rain and sleet. She had not enjoyed that so much, and decided that perhaps being a ranger, slogging over mountain passes in the depths of winter and crossing the wildlands to the south and east during storms and floods, was not the life for her.
Skraffi was chuntering away happily, not the least bit perturbed by Haldora’s absence of interest. She suspected that he would have been saying much the same had she not been there and that she had been brought along simply for her presence rather than to provide any labour or physical assistance. He had moved on to discussing his bees, which he often did at great length, and complaining that in the last year their numbers had dwindled. A third of the hives had died out over the winter and Skraffi was laying the blame for this on the goblins, though he was somewhat uncertain on the exact process by which encroaching greenskins could affect such catastrophes on the bee colonies.
They turned off the main road and ascended a long, shallow set of stairs winding left and right up the mountainside. In places it was almost flat, where terraces had been dug. Some of the levels housed peat burners – the peat brought up from the boglands far to the south – others kilns and a few were set aside for cultivating berries and root vegetables.
The two dwarfs reached the top of the mountain shoulder shortly before midday. They took a short break to rest here, looking down the valley road all the way to the wildlands. Here and there the grey stone of the outer keeps and ranger stations broke the rolling hills, and the road continued, only changing course near the foot of Mount Bloodhorn, to swing east before, out of sight, it curved along the Blind River heading towards Karak Izril.
Haldora took off her pack and sat down on a stone, moulded by generations of dwarfs doing the same over preceding centuries. Skraffi stood for a little while longer, gazing out to the east. It was there that Karak Eight Peaks was found, and Karak Azul also. It heartened Haldora to think that she shared the same ancestors as the dwarfs of those great holds. Sometimes it seemed as though Ekrund was on its own, stuck far away in a forgotten corner. Haldora had always thought of the earlier settlers in the Dragonback Mountains as explorers and adventurers, but now that she thought about it perhaps they had been isolationists, seeking somewhere away from the old lands where they would not be disturbed. That certainly explained why, to Haldora’s eye at least, the older folk of Ekrund seemed far more resistant to change and new ideas than she ever imagined the dwarfs of the old mountains could be.
There was a trace of a grey smudge on the horizon, barely visible. Haldora thought it was a storm cloud but Skraffi noticed it too and set her straight.
‘Karag Haraz is blowing again,’ he said, referring to the immense volcano that reared up in the heart of the old mountains, only a few days’ march from Karak Eight Peaks. ‘He’s been rumbling and belching ever since the great quakes came but that looks like a big one. I hope it bodes nothing bad for those folks.’
‘They’ve been living in the shadow of Karag Haraz forever, Grammi, I don’t think it’s going to cause them trouble now.’
‘And what about Karak Varn then? Since the hold was founded they’ve had a lake on their doorstep. And then, crack-bang-wallop! Suddenly the city’s flooded and the goblins are getting in.’
‘It’ll take more than that to open up Karak Eight Peaks,’ said Haldora. ‘Just as it’ll take more than some scrawny goblins to get the better of Ekrund. I tell you, we’ve never been safer since the end of the war.’
‘And you would know, would you?’ said Skraffi. He pulled out a pipe from his pack and lit it. After a few puffs he turned back to Haldora. ‘There’s no need to be frightened of anything, I know. I’m not saying we should be running about like our beards are on fire. But folks are getting complacent again. Soft. Like your father, so busy worrying about the treasury door he’s leaving the gates open.’
‘I don’t agree with him on everything, Grammi, but I know he’s looking after all our interests. Though I’m not ready yet I do want to have children one day and I’d like to know that there’ll be a few coins left in the vaults for them.’
‘It’s no good filling the vault for the goblins, is all I’m saying.’ Skraffi emptied out his pipe and stowed it away. He nodded down the path leading across the mountain ridge into the high meadows. ‘Let’s get honey to make some lovely mead, eh?’
Haldora followed him a short distance behind, pondering Skraffi’s warning. In an ideal world there would be patrols and guards, but her father had made it clear since her earliest years that the world was far from ideal. She felt caught between two worlds. Maybe three.
In her father’s world there was work and gold and duty. That was enough for him, and for her mother. Gabbik had told her countless times that when she had children of her own she would understand just how rewarding it could be to simply provide for their upkeep.
Then there was Skraffi, indulging her flights of fancy, encouraging ambition and independence. Awdhelga had not only trodden her own path, she had battered through a few walls and scaled a couple of mountaintops to get where she wanted to go. Had she also been fighting her father all that time?
And in the middle somewhere was the life that Haldora wanted. Could she be free and dutiful at the same time? Was it possible to raise a family and still be oneself?
Most of all, Haldora wondered just how much of her future would be left up to her to define. Events could make a mockery of all plans and ambitions. It was tempting to ignore her grandfather’s misgivings about orcs and goblins on the rise, but she had too much respect for him to dismiss them entirely. Skraffi’s vague but dire predictions seemed out of character for a dwarf who was so optimistic about everything else. A pessimist would have given up on the meadery for a start.
They reached the meadow a short way down the path, bordered on two sides by the wooded slopes, the south and west dropping away through a tumble of rocky ridges all the way into the next valley. Skraffi had thirty hives here, right in the middle of the pastureland and wild trees where there were flowers aplenty for his bees.
There was also a little stone shed, with one window and a slanted roof of timber over which had been stretched tarred leather for a waterproof coating. Haldora accompanied Skraffi into the outhouse, dumping the pack on a table just inside the door.
Everything inside was haphazard – shelves filled with all manner of bits of string, chain, small broken knives, ceramic pots, blobs of grey putty and numerous blankets, scarves and floppy-brimmed hats stuffed in various corners and wedged under things. But amongst the anarchy was a small square of organised space, in which Skraffi sat down on a small stool. There was a wooden crate under one of the teetering shelves, which he pulled out and started to rummage through.
He said something, waggling a finger in the direction of the other end of the shed, but his voice was so muffled by box and beard that Haldora couldn’t understand him.
‘What was that?’
‘Fetch me that firebox, Haldi,’ said Skraffi, pulling himself out. ‘And there’s some dried leaves in a sack over by the window.’
‘It’s Haldora,’ she replied, seeking out the objects as directed. The firebox was small enough to fit into her palm, about as deep as her thumb, made of tin, heavily dented and scratched. She checked the flint and it sparked nicely. Fetching out the sack of leaves, she handed the firebox to Skraffi and stepped towards the window.
‘It’s a good spot,’ she said, looking out. The glass was thick and filled with air bubbles – discards from the bottle plant, she realised, but it was clean, and beyond she could see down one of the vales and had a good view of the majesty of the mountains to the north. Out of sight was the coast, and in her mind’s eye, recalling the maps Gramma Awdie had shown her as a youngster, she moved up the seashore to the gulf at the top of the Dragonback Peaks. Further still Blood River emptied into the gulf where the Barak Varr stood, its massive sea gates guarding the largest ships of the dwarf empire.
Dwarfs were not much for travelling on water, using the rivers only as needed and the sea even more rarely. It was hard to believe that huge galleys and triremes from Barak Varr had patrolled the coast, clashing with elven hawkships and merwyrms. That was about the closest Ekrund had come to actual battle – most of its warriors marched to the defence of Barak Varr but had seen no fighting in the Dragonbacks themselves.
‘If the elves never reached Ekrund, what makes you worry the orcs will?’ she asked, turning to Skraffi. ‘I mean, the elves had ships and dragons. What’ve orcs got?’
‘Wyverns,’ grunted Skraffi. He was stuffing leaves into a funnel-shaped contraption, about the size of a helmet. When Haldora looked more closely she saw it actually was a helmet, with a length of pipe inserted into the top and a leather bag riveted on the bottom.
Skraffi stood up and placed the helmet-device to one side. He threw a long scarf to Haldora and started to wrap another around his face. He pulled it down for a moment to speak.
‘And the elves came from all across the world. Orcs are just a few days march away, even if the rangers don’t see them.’
‘Hiding, are they?’ said Haldora.
‘They can be clever, you know. And if there’s anything more dangerous than an orc, it’s an orc that can think a little.’
Haldora snorted at the thought and wrapped her face with the scarf, leaving only her eyes uncovered. She rammed on the wide-brimmed hat that Skraffi threw to her next and pulled on a set of heavy gauntlets she found drooped over the edge of a shelf. At a gesture from Skraffi she picked up a pile of blankets and pushed her way towards the door, her face already starting to prickle with sweat.
