The end times, p.52
The End Times, page 52
The way to Skarsnik was clear.
Queek gathered himself for another leap, tittering evilly.
The ground shook. Light blasted around him and he fell to the floor, Dwarf Gouger clattering from his grasp. His ears rang from the blast. When he looked up, goblin and skaven corpses smoked all around him.
At first he thought he had been hit by Skarsnik, but the goblin was gone from his rock pile. Away to the right of where Skarsnik had capered, Queek caught a glimpse of pale grey fur, almost white.
‘White-fur!’ hissed Queek. ‘You pay for this with your head!’
Kranskritt rose from a tunnel in the centre of the cavern, arcane power crackling around him, and came to rest on the side of a toppled pillar. He snarled imperiously and flung out one hand-paw. The ground rumbled. Fissures opened like hungry mouths, swallowing creatures of all kinds indiscriminately. Queek started, meaning to run-scurry at the white-fur and strike him dead. But there was something else with him, a shadow behind him, half hidden by the black glare of Kranskritt’s magic.
Verminlord. Queek snarled. At first he thought it the same one as had come to him, but it was not. The horns were different, for one, and it was less hidden in the shadows than the other.
‘Two verminlords in the City of Pillars?’ he whispered to himself, ill at ease. ‘Unprecedented.’
The ground shook regularly as Kranskritt and his master – for the verminlord was almost certainly the weak-willed sorcerer’s ruler – unleashed a storm of earthquakes, sending even the agile Queek staggering. Snarling, he ran towards Kranskritt.
‘Fool-fool! Stop-stop!’ shouted Queek.
To his surprise, Kranskritt heard him and looked down. An expression of pure, malicious calculation crossed his face. His hands rose. Queek tensed, ready to dodge. His warpstone amulet pulsed with protective magics.
The moment passed and Kranskritt performed a deep bow. One without any sign of submission, the sort of acknowledgement given to an equal! Kranskritt was getting too confident. Another reason to kill him.
‘Do not despair, mighty Queek!’ the sorcerer shouted over the noise of his patron’s continuing magical barrage. ‘I came from my hunt in the mountains as quick-quick as I could. Clan Scruten will aid mighty Queek and save the day from green-thing treachery!’
The verminlord loomed over Kranskritt. The grey seer’s tail swished easily, given confidence by the proximity of the daemon. Queek snarled. His mind worked fast. If he killed Kranskritt now, it would be in front of everyone at a time when the sorcerer was helping turn the battle. Furthermore, he had a verminlord stood right behind him. Queek fleetingly considered matching his blades against it, but wisely decided not to.
He shouted instead. ‘Fool weak-meat! You send the green-imp scurrying away from mighty Queek’s blade! You will pay for this!’
‘And mighty Queek was doing so well without me,’ said Kranskritt sarcastically. ‘See! The goblin tunnels collapse. They are trapped! You win-win, mighty Queek. You are correct – I should be paid for this. I should be paid many-much warptokens, not with unkind bite of steel.’
Queek bared his fangs and held his serrated sword up in challenge to the seer. Then with a swift turn he sprang away, seeking others to vent his anger upon.
He would kill Kranskritt later. He promised himself that he would.
A great tremor ran through the ground as the skaven daemon and his pet sorcerer unleashed another earthquake. The goblins’ tunnels fell in, opening long trenches in the floor. Warriors from all sides fell into the gaping pits.
Belegar’s plans were in tatters.
‘A thousand times a thousand curses on Golgfag and his honourless ogres,’ said one of his bodyguards.
‘Yes,’ said Belegar absently. He watched the skaven sorcerer. He was troubled anew. Daemons were abroad in Vala-Azrilungol.
‘They are ogres. It was a gamble, a poor roll of the dice, no more, my lord,’ said another.
Belegar shook with anger. ‘It’s not that. I don’t understand,’ said Belegar. ‘How did Skarsnik know? How did he speak with them?’
Behind his back, the hammerers shared glances. This was an oft-repeated story: bold King Belegar outwitted by a goblin.
The abomination was finally dead, for good this time, but the price had been high. The crushed corpse of Brok Gandsson leaked its life-fluids onto the bare rock, pinned under the bulk of the twice-living monster. Only thirty or so of Belegar’s elite hammerers remained.
Belegar looked at the disaster unfolding in the hall. Durggan’s battery was shattered; all his men and those set to guard him were dead. The sorry remnants of the flank the artillery had anchored were surrounded on all sides, cut off and beyond hope. The horns sounded the retreat time and again, but many of the dwarfs of Karak Eight Peaks were mired in battle with one faction or the other and could not retreat. Either that or they had fallen into all-consuming fits of hatred, desperate to bury their axes in their despised foes. These dawi had lost all reason and did not heed the signals. Worst of all, the path to the doors of Clan Skalfdon was thick with goblins.
‘Sire, sire!’ said a familiar voice.
‘Drakki?’ Belegar said flatly. ‘Why aren’t you with the rearguard, recording our…’ He wanted to say defeat, he should have said defeat, but somehow he couldn’t. He was bone weary, not merely from today, but from fifty years of chasing an impossible dream. Defeat was too big a word to fit into his mouth.
‘The rearguard are with you, my king. The lines have collapsed. We have been pushed together.’ He gestured at the shrinking knot of dwarfs, units fighting back to back. ‘Bold dawi await your command, my king.’
Belegar was dazed. ‘I…’
Drakki grabbed the king’s shoulder and squeezed. ‘Do something,’ he whispered.
It was thanks to the mercy of Valaya, Belegar supposed, that the ogres were leaving the hall, killing anyone of whatever army who got in their way. He blinked. The fuddle of emotion clouding his mind receded.
‘Blow the charges,’ he said.
‘My king?’ said Drakki.
‘I said, blow the charges,’ Belegar repeated, more clearly. He hefted his hammer. His warriors breathed easier seeing their lord return to them.
‘Are you sure this is wise?’ said Drakki.
‘No. But they are rigged to collapse the hall to the south. If Durggan did his work well – and when did he ever not? – we should be able to retreat through the gate.’
‘Dawi of Karak Eight Peaks! Dawi of Vala-Azrilungol that was! To arms to arms! Make for the gate!’ called their thanes.
Horns blew loudly. The dwarfs checked their aggression, forming up into squares and blocks.
‘Do it now,’ said Belegar.
A complex tune played from the Golden Horn of the Iron Brotherhood.
‘To the fore! To the fore!’ shouted Belegar’s clan lords.
The dwarfs, now in a broad column, lurched like a train of ore carts beginning their journey. Slowly they gained traction, and then they were away, axes and hammers falling, carving a red path through thaggoraki and grobi alike towards the great doors of Clan Skalfdon.
Three minutes later, long fuses burned their way to the charges hidden around the bases of the pillars to the southern end of the hall. Twelve explosions followed one another quickly, their reports amplified to deafening levels by the enclosed space.
The pillars ground on shattered bases. Broken at top and bottom, they tumbled with apparent slowness, an illusion created by their great size and weight. They broke into many pieces as their toppling accelerated, falling on the hordes of Belegar’s enemies as effectively as bombs and bringing torrents of stone from the ceiling with them, killing hundreds more.
The dwarfs fought on, too occupied to pay much attention to the roof falling in behind them. The collective scream of skaven and goblins being crushed chilled even boiling dwarf blood.
‘My king,’ shouted Drakki. He pointed upwards. Belegar followed his arthritis-knobbed finger to the ceiling. ‘Something has gone wrong!’
A crack was opening across the sky of stone, dislodging glimstones that had shone for five thousand years. The fissure spread with ominous leisure, slowly, as if it were sentient, and choosing for itself the most devastating route. Stones rattled down on the column of embattled dwarfs.
Shouts rose from along the force’s length ‘Ware! Ware! Cave-in!’
The dwarfs raised their shields over their heads, as the roots of the world fell in upon them.
PART TWO
The Final Fall of Karak Eight Peaks
Autumn–Winter 2524
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
QUEEN KEMMA’S OATH
‘Tor Rudrum is gone, vala,’ said Gromvarl.
Queen Kemma set down her riveting pliers and sagged over her metalwork. She did nothing but thread mail links to one another all day every day, because there was nothing else for her to do. Belegar would not let her out, nor would he see her.
‘We are trapped, then,’ she said.
‘Aye, lass,’ said Gromvarl. He reached out awkwardly to pat her back. ‘That’s about the size of it. A flight of gyrocopters came in yesterday.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Only one got through, Kemma,’ he said gently. ‘The rest were shot down by the thaggoraki. They’ve overrun all the peaks, those that are not in the hands of the grobi, at any rate.’
Kemma gave a sad nod, staring at the shining hauberk, perfectly crafted although not yet finished, in her lap.
‘The last one, pilot by the name of Torin Steamhammer, just got in before the ledges were taken by grobi on spiders.’
‘Spider riders? I thought they lived in the forests in the lowlands.’
‘They did,’ said Gromvarl, wheezing as he sat down on a three-legged stool. He took his pipe out from his jerkin and filled it. He thought to take a half-bowl, for there was precious little tobacco left in the Eight Peaks, just like there was precious little of anything fine remaining. But with things the way they were he figured he probably had scant days left to smoke what small amounts he had, and after a second thought rammed it full with his thumb. ‘All sorts of monsters up here now. Things I’ve never seen in the mountains before. The world’s in turmoil, vala.’
‘Do you have to call me that?’ Kemma said sharply. A booming played under their conversation, deep and monotonous, never stopping – the beat of an orcish battering ram on the great gates of the citadel. The greenskins had been at it ever since they’d driven the dwarfs back from the outer defences. Belegar’s warriors did what they could to keep Skarsnik’s hordes back, but they were low on everything bar rocks to drop on the besiegers. ‘You’re my only friend, Gromvarl. My only link with home.’
Gromvarl looked at her fondly. How much she’s grown, he thought. Such a pity the way fate falls. ‘Aye.’
‘He still won’t talk to me, will he?’
Gromvarl shook his head, sending his clouds of smoke shifting about his head.
‘My son?’
‘Thorgrim’s fine, my lady. He’s fretting about you. Keeps asking his dad to come and talk things through, but Belegar’s having none of it.’ He didn’t tell her that Belegar had precious little time for his heir either. He had become withdrawn, pale. He wasn’t sleeping, he was sure of that. Dawi were tough, and Belegar tougher than most, but that wound he was trying so hard to hide from everyone was not only obvious, it was not healing. Gromvarl was worried, very worried, but he did his best to hide it from Kemma behind an air of grave concern.
‘My husband is an arrogant, prideful fool, Gromvarl,’ said Kemma.
‘He’s one of the best, if not the best, warrior in all the Karaz Ankor, va– Kemma.’
‘He’s an idiot, and we’ll all die because of him.’
Gromvarl couldn’t disagree in all honesty, so he harrumphed and looked around the chamber, searching for the right thing to say. It was austere, cold, lacking a womanly touch. He found it depressing that such a good-hearted rinn as Kemma should have been brought to this. He was glad he did not have daughters. He was glad, in these awful times, he had no children at all. Still, he had not finished imparting his run of bad news. He mulled over how much he would say, but he had promised to keep her up to date.
A promise is a promise, he reminded himself. Without honour, and trust, what did they have left? An oath lasted longer than stone and iron.
‘There’s more, Kemma,’ he said quietly. Kemma fixed him with her eyes, expressionless, waiting patiently. ‘The gyrocopter brought a message from Karaz-a-Karak. After he read it, the king sat on his own in the Hall of Pillared Iron all day, bellowing at anyone who came near. He only told us what it said this morning, when he’d calmed down. A bit. Most of the holds are under siege, it can’t be much longer before they all are.’
‘And?’ said Kemma. ‘There is more, isn’t there, Gromvarl?’
The longbeard sighed. She always was far too clever. ‘Karak Azul has fallen.’ His heart pained him to speak it aloud. ‘King Kazador and Thorek Ironbrow were both killed, an ambush in the high passes some time ago.’
Kemma drew in a sharp breath. Ironbrow in particular was a terrible loss. None had his wisdom and skill with the runes. Much sacred knowledge was lost with him.
‘The hold was overrun not long after,’ continued Gromvarl. ‘The message from the High King was the same as all the others the king has had these last weeks.’
Kemma clutched at the hauberk. The rings tinkled. Gromril, by the look of it. ‘This is for Thorgrim,’ she said. ‘He’s outgrown his last.’
‘He’s getting a good girth on him,’ said Gromvarl approvingly. ‘He’ll be a strong lad, and a good king.’
Much to Gromvarl’s dismay, Kemma burst into tears.
‘He’ll never be king! Can’t you see? It’s all over. They’re coming to kill us all. They’ll kill you, and the king, and my son!’
Gromvarl reached out his hand uncertainly. A year on, his arm still pained him. Though it had set true, it had been wasted from weeks of disuse, and half-rations were no aid to building its strength back up. ‘Come on now, lass, there’s no need for that. It’s worse than it was even in the time of King Lunn, I grant you, and yet your husband is holding out. There’s not many who could do that. The runes might no longer glow upon the gates…’
‘Why?’ demanded Kemma. ‘The magic of the ancestors deserts us.’
Gromvarl clucked his tongue and rattled his pipe on top and bottom teeth. ‘No one knows. No one knows anything any more.’ It was a poor answer and did little to satisfy her. He blundered on. ‘My point is, they’re strong still. They’re tall, made of stone, steel and gromril. Made to last forever. They have not fallen yet. Why,’ he forced a smile, ‘the urk have been at it for days and they’ve not even dented them.’
‘There are many things like that in the dwarf realm, supposedly eternal, and they are failing one by one,’ said Kemma. She wiped her eyes, angry at herself for her lapse in control. ‘I’m sorry, but this is my son! A curse on dawi heads and the blocks of stone they call their brains. We should have gone months ago. Pride will kill us all.’
‘You’ll see,’ said Gromvarl. ‘Things are bad, but we’ll prevail. We’ve less ground to cover now the surface holdings are gone. Duregar’s finally been called back from the East Gate. We’ve some strong warriors here. Good lads, and brave. Most are veterans. I’ve not seen such a lot of battle-hardened dawi in my life. With them at our backs we’ve every chance. We’ve still got our defences. Kromdal’s line is the strongest yet. There are only four ways through that: the King’s Archgate, the Blackvault Gate, Varya’s Stonearch and the Silvergate. Hundreds of dawi wait there, and they’re all spoiling for a fight. And if they get through that there’s the Khrokk line, and after that…’
‘After that they’re into the citadel,’ said Kemma harshly. ‘Belegar is waiting for our enemies to fall on each other, or to wear themselves out. But they won’t. Ogres, greenskins and thaggoraki have us under siege. There’s never any less of them, and fewer of us every day. We’ve nowhere left to run. My husband’s too set in his ways! He can’t see that they’re not going to kill themselves on our shield walls – they’re going to keep coming until they break through and destroy every last one of us.’
‘It’s worked all the other times.’
‘This isn’t like all the other times! Valaya preserve me from the thickheadedness of dawi men!’ she said. ‘You’ve already told me there’s no help coming. We’ve not changed, Gromvarl. It’s why we are going to fail. Doing the same thing over and over and over… All it has to do is not work once. It didn’t work at Karak Azul. Why should it work here? They killed the reckoner. Dawi killing dawi! Do you know why?’ She didn’t give him a chance to respond but answered for him. ‘They killed him because he knew. Because he wasn’t a tradition-bound fool.’
‘Because he was helping you leave,’ said Gromvarl. He deliberately avoided the word escape.
‘It could have been you,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I’m glad it wasn’t.’
Gromvarl sighed around his pipe stem, and patted her hand. She was right. Kvinn-wyr was overrun, all the surface outposts, the East Gate three weeks back. The citadel was all they had left, and only the part above the ground at that.
‘It’ll all be fine, you’ll see,’ he said.
Kemma grasped his hand. She smiled through her tears. ‘You have been a loyal servant. You are wise beyond the length of your beard, and a fine warrior, Gromvarl, but you are a terrible liar.’
He humphed and clicked his teeth on his pipe.
‘Don’t get into a huff! I’m no beardling to be coddled. If we’re to die, then I’ll do it with my hammer in my hand,’ she said. Her smile hardened with resolve. ‘This I swear.’
