The Great Betrayal

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Wrath and Ruin

Skirting the Worlds Edge, the caravan of wagons was deep into the mountain passes now. Despite the fact he rode out ahead of Nadri, Krondi could ill-afford the detour to Kazad Kro especially when it had yielded nothing. His coffers were all but empty, wasted by elven treachery, and he felt the sting of that indignity worse than a dagger in his gut.

Driving the mules hard, he was determined to at least ensure his passenger reached Karaz-a-Karak in good time.

Perhaps it was his obsession with achieving that goal, or possibly some residual anger from his meeting with Skarnag Grum though it was days old, that blinded Krondi to the fact that he had strayed into the sights of a predator. Three days out of the domain of the hill dwarfs and he finally realised they were being tracked.

Cursing himself for ignoring the signs and allowing his good instincts to be clouded by selfish concerns, Krondi turned to his charge who was sitting quietly alongside him in the lead wagon.

‘We are being followed,’ he said. Krondi glanced over his shoulder, but all he could see was the lengthening shadows of the slowly dipping sun. Nightfall was not far off and they were too far away from Everpeak to reach it before the light died completely. Krondi did not want to still be on the road when that happened.

The old hooded dwarf beside him grunted something, appearing to ignite the smoking root in the cup of his pipe with his finger.

Hailing one of the guards riding at the back of the wagon, Krondi said, ‘Keep a sharp eye behind us. I don’t think we are alone out here.’

Durgi frowned, gesturing to the twenty or so warriors that rode on the four wagons. ‘Only a fool would attack such a well-defended caravan.’

‘That is what concerns me. A sharp eye, remember,’ Krondi told him, pointing to his eye before returning both hands to the reins.

They were approaching a rocky gorge. High-sided and narrow, it would funnel the wagons into a tight cordon, an ideal position for an ambush. Krondi tried to search the highlands at the summit of the gorge for signs of warriors. There were only craggy boulders and rough gorse bowing gently in the wind.

He muttered, ‘Something doesn’t feel right.’

On the path laid before them the wagons would be exposed but at least they would have room to manoeuvre if needed. Through the narrow defile of the gorge they’d be sheltered from the flanks but vulnerable to an attack from above. Making any sort of camp in this terrain was out of the question, so the two choices remained.

Take the path or travel through the gorge?

Krondi chewed his beard then said, ‘These mountains are my home. I know them as I know my own skin. So, why then do I fear them all of a sudden?’

‘Do you wish me to answer, beardling?’ asked the old dwarf with a voice like cracking oak.

‘Something hunts us,’ said Krondi, urging the mules to greater effort. ‘And anything bold enough to attack a party of over twenty armoured dawi in their own lands is something I do not wish to fight.’

‘We won’t reach Karaz-a-Karak,’ said the old dwarf, ‘not before they catch us.’

Krondi turned to the hooded dwarf sitting next to him smoking his pipe. His eyes grew a little wider. ‘So I am not imagining it. We are being followed.’

‘Have been for miles, lad.’

Krondi was incredulous. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘What good would that do? Kill us quicker, maybe. No, better to get closer to the hold, better to let them see us and know us for what we are.’

‘Their prey?’ asked Krondi.

Now the hooded dwarf turned and there was fire in his eyes, of forges ancient and forgotten, of jewels that glitter for eternity.

‘No. We are dawi, stone and steel. And we are not afraid. That is what they will see. Strength, lad. Strength and courage of our ancestors.’ The flame in the hooded dwarf’s eyes faded and he added, ‘Slow down, spare the mules or you ride the wagon train into the ground and do our hunters’ job for them.’

Krondi nodded, let his beating heart slow also to a dull hammering in his chest.

‘I have fought in dozens of battles, fought the urk and grobi, trolls and gronti. I am a warrior, not a merchant.’

‘Aye, lad,’ said the hooded dwarf, ‘but this is not a battle. There’s no shield wall, no brother’s shoulder to lock against your own. We are alone out here in the rising dark.’

The mouth of the gorge was approaching, forking off from the main path.

‘What should I do?’

Supping deep of his pipe, the passenger said, ‘It doesn’t matter. Either way, we will have to fight.’

Muttering an oath to Valaya, Krondi took the gorge.

The skryzan-harbark was ruined. It slumped in Heglan Copperfist’s workshop a broken wreck, once a ship and now little more than kindling. Some of the hull had survived intact but the sails had been utterly destroyed, along with Helgan’s dreams, in the crash.

Under threat of expulsion from the guild, Master Strombak had commanded him to break the vessel down, strip it for parts, but faced with the reality of that Heglan was finding it hard to imagine such a formerly magnificent creation rendered into anything so prosaic as a stone thrower or heavy ballista. It would be an easy task, Heglan was gifted as an engineer, but that was also why he railed against the fetters of tradition the guild shackled him with.

His entire workshop was littered with designs, plans sketched with sticks of charcoal depicting various flying vessels he one day hoped to build. Incredibly detailed, each parchment schematic was filled with calculations, formulae for wind speed and velocity, theories on loft and chemical equations related to steam and pressure.

Of the engineers, Heglan was the only one to have fitted his workshop with a vast skylight. He had fashioned the glass himself and the massive aperture sat above the wreckage of his airship, letting in the sun to expose its many wounds. Shadows intruded on the scene as Heglan scrutinised through a pall of pipe smoke. Sharp, hooked beaks, arrow-straight wingspans and the suggestion of talons created a fearsome menagerie of silhouettes. Alongside his engineering endeavours, sitting between his many racks of tools, his cogs and half-built machineries, his oils and ropes, nails, bolts, screws, chisels, planes and work benches was his feathered host.

Here Heglan had created an aviary of the creatures of the sky he so wished to emulate. Preserved, meticulously posed and stuffed, there were hundreds. Often he had ventured in the low lands at the edge of the hold or taken a grubark out towards the ocean in the south. Dead birds were a common sight. Heglan had gathered them, studied their musculature, their pinions and the composition of their feathers. A notebook, bound in boar hide, was almost filled to the hilt with his scratched observations and sketches.

‘It should have worked,’ he muttered bitterly to an uncaring gloom. ‘It should have flown.’ He approached the wreck. In his tool belt he had a large hammer and a heavy-headed axe for the demolition. Running his hand over the hull, he winced every time he felt a crack or encountered a splinter. Rigging had broken apart like twine, masts snapped like limbs. The stink of spilled grog reeked heavily and spoiled the lacquering of the wood in places.

Shadow eclipsed most of the airship’s remains. Heglan kept many of the lanterns doused, lighting just enough in order to work. Cloud obscured the sun and any luminescence that might penetrate the skylight. Heglan preferred it this way. Darkness salved his thoughts and his stung pride.

Nadri had accomplished so much, earning the respect of his guild, his hold and the dwarfs of other holds beyond Barak Varr’s borders. Heglan was an engineer, a vaunted profession for any dwarf, but had thus far not achieved his potential. With their father Lodri dead and grandfather Dammin cold in his tomb, it mattered more than ever to honour them. Both brothers felt this keenly, and Nadri had remarked upon it when he had left Barak Varr to try and catch Krondi and the caravans.

‘Sons are destined to bury their fathers, Heg,’ he had said. ‘It’s only war that turns that around.’

Heglan had his head in his hands. ‘I’ve shamed them this day with my hubris.’

Nadri gripped his brother’s shoulders, made him look up. ‘Be proud of what you have achieved. You honour them. You will have your moment, Heg. Determination is what made the Copperfist clan what it is this day. Do not forget that. Do not give in to despair, either. We are dawi, stout of back and strong of purpose. We are the mountains, enduring and unyielding. Remember that and you will be remembered, just as they are.’

He gestured to the talisman around Heglan’s neck. It was the exact simulacrum of the one that Nadri also wore. Upon it were wrought the names of Lodri and Dammin, a son and father.

Heglan nodded, relieved from his torpor by his brother’s words of support.

‘But do this one thing for me,’ said Nadri, releasing Heglan’s shoulders to make his point clear with an outstretched finger.

‘Name it, Nadri.’

‘Heed Strombak, do not go against your master’s will and risk expulsion from the guild. Do that for me, Heg.’

Heglan went to protest, but the look in his brother’s eyes warned him to do so would earn further reproach. Reluctantly, he nodded.

Nadri nodded too, satisfied he’d been heard. ‘Good,’ he said, and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I’m bound for Karaz-a-Karak. Krondi will meet me there and we’ll be on our way.’ He glanced at the ruined airship, squatting in a forlorn heap inside the workshop. ‘I wish I could stay and help you with this, but I am already late.’

They clasped forearms, and Heglan embraced him.

‘What would I do without you, Nadri?’

‘Likely go mad,’ he laughed as they parted.

After that, Heglan had bidden him farewell. Dismissing the journeymen dwarfs who had helped retrieve the broken ship, he had been left alone. There he had stayed in seclusion for two days, pondering Nadri’s words and those of Master Strombak.

Almost on the last of his smoking root, he chewed the end of his pipe and regarded the broken ship through a veil of grey. Three days and he had not lifted a finger to break the ship apart. This part of the workshop was sealed, a vault where Heglan could craft in secret and not be disturbed. Other machineries could be fashioned to demonstrate his commitment to his master. This, the plan forming in Heglan’s mind inspired by the drawings on his workshop walls, he need never know about.

For the first time in three days, he gripped the worn haft of his hammer. Ever since his grandfather Dammin had shown him the proper way to use one, Heglan had regarded it as a tool to create, not destroy.

Purposefully, he strode towards the wrecked skryzan-harbark.

‘I am sorry, brother.’

A dwarf would fly and Heglan was determined to be the first.

Sweat lathered the flanks of the mules. The beasts were gasping, shrieking with fear as Krondi drove the head of the wagon train like all the daemons of hellfire were at their heels.

For all he knew, they actually were.

Of course, daemons did not clad themselves in midnight black, nor did they carry bows, nor did they wear the countenances of elves…

‘Curse the thagging elgi and all their foetid spawn!’ Krondi shrank into his driver’s seat, hunched as tight as he could be and still lash the mules.

Arrows whickered overhead. On the road behind them, three guards lay dead with shafts in their backs. More protruded from the sides of the wagons, jutting like the spines of some forest creature.

Dwarfs armed with crossbows tried to reply in kind but the bouncing wagons, now driven into a frantic charge through the ever-narrowing gorge, made aiming difficult. Even on foot, at full sprint, the elves not only kept pace but were also more accurate.

Durgi took one in the eye. He spun, a rivulet of blood streaking his face like a long tear, before he fell.

Another guard — it looked like Lugni but he died so fast it was hard to tell for sure — gurgled his last breath and also slumped off the wagon. Glancing over his shoulder, Krondi watched their bodies smack off the road like dead cattle and swore an oath to Grimnir towards their vengeance.

Several of the surviving guards were wounded. Some had arrows in their shoulders, others cuts or grazes from near misses. At least all four of the wagons were still intact but the road through the gorge was hard, better suited to travellers on foot than mules and iron-banded wheels.

Krondi cursed himself for a fool again. Then he cursed the elves.

‘This road joins the dawangi pass to Kundrin hold,’ he said to the hooded dwarf, pointing at a fork in the gorge. ‘It’s little more than a track but we can lose them in there and make for Thane Durglik’s halls. Once we have sanctuary behind his walls, we can go back out and hunt these cowards down.’

The hooded dwarf nodded, but didn’t stir beyond that. His head was bowed and he was muttering beneath his breath. Krondi did not recognise the words, for they had the arcane cadence of magic.

From the brief glances he’d had and the shouted reports of the guards farther back on the wagon train, Krondi reckoned on six raiders. Twenty dwarfs against six raiders was an uneven contest but the elves had them at range, at the disadvantage of terrain and could pick them off. There was also no guarantee that there weren’t more raiders lying in wait. No, to stand and fight was foolish. Better to run and find safe haven. Though all evidence pointed to it, they did not seem like mere bandits either and this was what disquieted Krondi the most.

He was reining the lead mule in, turning the bit so its head faced towards the fork he wanted to take, when a shadow loomed overhead, crouched down at the summit of the high-sided gorge.

A dwarf yelled ‘Archers!’ before he was cut off by an arrow in his heart. It punched straight through the breastplate, came out of his back and impaled him.

‘Ghuzakk! Ghuzakk!’ Krondi urged the mules that gaped and panted with the last of their failing strength.

The fork that would take them out of the gorge and to the winding trail that led to Kundrin hold was closing.

From above, steel-fanged death came down like rain. Though the dwarfs raised shields, several of the guards were struck in the leg or shoulder. One screamed as he was pinned to the wagon deck by his ankle. When he lowered his shield, a second shaft pierced his eye and the screaming stopped.

A terrible, ear-piercing shriek was wrenched from the mouth of one of the mules on the leading wagon. Moments later the poor beast collapsed and died, unable to go any further. Its companion slumped down with it, similarly exhausted. Krondi was pitched forwards and clung to a hand rail to stay in his seat. Abandoning the reins, for they were no use to him now, he instead concentrated on keeping his shield aloft to ward off the relentless arrow storm. It was studded with shafts in seconds, several of the barbed tips punching straight through the wood mere inches from his nose.

‘Thagging bastards!’ Krondi leapt off the wagon as it slewed to a halt and nosed into the dirt road with only the collapsed bodies of the mules to slow it. The hooded dwarf beside him made the jump at the same time. Miraculously, the arrows had yet to hit or even graze him.

‘Old one,’ Krondi called to him, ‘here!’ Sheltering beneath a rocky overhang, he gestured to the hooded dwarf, who followed.

Despite the furious attack, several of the guards yet lived and were making their way from the wreckage of the other three wagons to join up with Krondi. Two tried to raise crossbows against the archers but were struck down before a bolt was even nocked to string. Of the rest, three out of the original twenty-strong band made it into cover.

An injured dwarf, Killi, was crawling on his belly towards them just a few feet from the safety of the overhang. One of the other guards went to drag him the rest of the way but Krondi hauled him back.

‘No, they’ll kill you too,’ he snapped.

A moment later, three arrows thudded into Killi’s back.

Then it stopped.

There was no sight of the elves above or those on the road behind. As if an eldritch wind had billowed through it to carry their enemies away, the gorge was deserted.

Krondi knew they were still there watching. Either they had run short of arrows or they were waiting to see if the dwarfs would venture from safety.

‘No one moves,’ he told the survivors.

Dwarfs can stay still for hours, even days. During his service in the armies of Gotrek Starbreaker, there was a dwarf Krondi knew, a real mule of a warrior. Lodden Strongarm was his name, a veteran of the Gatekeepers who had stood guard on the same portal into the Ungdrin Ankor for many years. Krondi knew him because he had been the warrior sent to relieve him from his post when the previous incumbent of that duty had died in battle. Three weeks Lodden had waited, unmoving by the gate. He only stirred to sip from a tankard of strong beer or to nibble from a chunk of stonebread, the only victuals he had to sustain him. Like the mountain, Lodden had stood guard and would not shirk or grumble for he had no one to grumble to. Finally, when Krondi had come to take Lodden’s place, the old Gatekeeper had grown long in beard, his skin dusted with fallen debris from the mountain to such an extent he looked almost part of it. He didn’t voice complaint when Krondi arrived, but merely nodded and returned to the hold.

Waiting was easy for dwarfs. They were mostly patient creatures. This was back when Krondi was young and full of fire. Times had moved on since then. Lodden was laid in silent repose in his tomb, whilst Krondi lived on to lament his loss of youth; but he was not as venerable as the hooded dwarf, whose voice broke through his maudlin reverie.

‘Draw your blades,’ he rasped, the sound of old oak carrying to every dwarf beneath the overhang. ‘They are coming for us.’

Those who still had axes showed them to the failing light.

Krondi drew his hammer, the weapon he had carried since he had been a Gatekeeper. Never in all the years he’d spent campaigning had the haft ever broken.

Darkness filled the gorge as the sun faded, drowning the dwarfs taking shelter at its edges in a black sea. Like shadows detaching themselves from the darkness of falling night, the elves emerged six abreast and filled the narrow road.

From the other side came four more, only this quartet still had arrows nocked and bows unslung. To Krondi’s eyes the slender necks and white pine shafts of the bows looked incongruous in the hands of the black-garbed killers.

‘There is more to this than mere thievery and murder,’ he murmured.

The hooded dwarf answered, a staff of iron appearing suddenly in his gnarled hands. ‘They cannot allow us to leave this place,’ he said. ‘A great doom is coming…’

From the group of six an elf came forwards, evidently their leader. He said something in a tongue unfamiliar to Krondi, though he could speak some elvish, and the four archers fell back.

So they wish to cut us then.

At least it was a better end than dying at the tip of an arrow.

When the six drew long serrated knives from their belts, Krondi knew his earlier assumption was true.

One of the other dwarfs piped up, ‘If we fight them, the others will shoot us in the back!’

‘Thagging elgi scum!’ spat another.

Krondi knew them both. They were brothers, Bokk and Threk. He briefly wondered if their father had any more sons to continue his name.

‘Make a circle,’ said Krondi. For the old veteran campaigner, memories came back in a red-hazed flood of similar last stands. On each of those previous occasions, fighting beasts or greenskins, dwarf tenacity had won out and he had survived. Somehow this time, it felt different.

The dwarfs obeyed Krondi’s command, coming together and raising shields. Only the hooded dwarf stood apart, and Krondi was content to let him. He hadn’t asked who the dwarf was and why he needed to be ferried to Karaz-a-Karak, but he’d seen enough, felt enough to realise he was not just some mere warrior.

‘Like links in a shirt of mail,’ he told the other dwarfs, ‘we do not part, we do not break. Stone and steel.’

‘Stone and steel,’ echoed all three in unison.

Seemingly amused by their antics, the leader of the elves bade some of his cohort forwards. Four night-clad warriors advanced with slow but deliberate purpose.

Krondi saw the glint of stone-cold killers in their eyes, and knew the last stand had been a mistake. It was far too late to do anything about that now. Closing his eyes for a moment, he made an oath to Valaya and then Grungni.

Let me die well, he beseeched them. Finally, he added a remark to Grimnir too, and let me take some of these whore-sons with me.

Four elves attacked as one, shrieking war cries.

Ugdrik stepped from the circle, breaking the wall, for the fall from his wagon had damaged his ear drum and he hadn’t heard Krondi’s command. Sparks flew for a few moments between his axe and an elven blade but poor Ugdrik was quickly gutted on a long knife, his guts spilling all over the road.

The others fared better. Under Krondi’s anvil-hard leadership, they repelled the first proper elven attack against their wall. Krondi buried the head of his hammer in the skull of one, which made it three apiece.

Frustrated, the elven leader sent his other warrior into the fight. In the warrior’s eyes, Krondi beheld a fathomless abyss of darkness and suppressed a tremor running through his body at the sight. The leader of the elves then hailed his archers to return and waded in himself, a sickle blade held low and by his side.

Seemed the elves did not fight fairly after all, which was no more than Krondi expected.

In a few seconds, what was a short skirmish became a dense melee through which it was tough to discern anything except flashing steel and the reek of copper. Bokk died swiftly, two jagged knives in his back and neck. His fountaining blood bathed Threk in a ruddy mire. He roared, threw himself at one elf, cut him down and wounded another, but a third slit open the grief-maddened dwarf’s neck.

It left only Krondi, the leader and the hollow-eyed warrior.

One of the elf archers went for the hooded dwarf. Embattled himself, Krondi heard a low whoomf! of crackling, snapping air, followed by a sudden burst of heat that pricked his bare skin. Screaming came swiftly on its heels. Burning flesh filled his nostrils with a noisome stench.

The hooded dwarf was chanting again, though this time he was much louder. It sounded like an invocation. Between his words, the yelled orders of the elven leader grew more frantic.

Then Krondi realised who he had in his midst and that they would not die after all.

Arrows were loosed by the three remaining archers, but the shafts broke as if they struck a mountainside.

In a momentary respite as the elves’ resolve began to fail them and they retreated, Krondi saw the hooded dwarf had one gnarled hand outstretched in front of him, clenched into a claw. Rings upon his fingers glowed brightly in the night gloom and as he brought them into a fist another flight of arrows snapped as if he had been holding them.

Out of shafts, the archers drew blades too and rushed the dwarfs.

Casting aside his cloak, the once hooded dwarf revealed his true identity.

Agrin Fireheart, Runelord of Barak Varr, stood in his armour of meteoric iron. His incantation reached a crescendo as he threw off his disguise and, as he bellowed the last arcane syllable, he brought his iron staff down hard upon the ground. Runes igniting upon the stave which filled with inner fire, a massive tremor erupted from the point where Agrin had struck.

The elves were flattened, their murderous charge violently arrested by the runelord’s magic.

A shout split the dark like a peal of thunder. It took a moment for Krondi, lying on his back like the elves, to realise it had come from Agrin’s mouth.

Like a dagger blade bent by the smith’s hammer, a jag of lightning pierced the sky and fed into the runelord’s staff, so bright that the arcing bolt lit up the gorge in azure monochrome. With sheer strength of will, he held it there, coruscating up and down the haft in agitated ripples of power like he was wrestling a serpent.

One of the elves was trying to rise, take up a fallen arrow and nock it to his bowstring.

Agrin immolated him like a cerulean candle. The elf burned, grew white hot… There was a flare of intense magnesium white and then he was gone, with only ash remaining.

Thrusting his staff skywards again, thunderheads growling above him, Agrin was about to unleash a greater storm when a spear of darkling power impaled him.

Slowly he lowered his staff and the clouds began to part, losing their belligerence. A smoking hole, burned around the edges, cut through the runelord’s meteoric armour.

It was just above his heart.

Agrin staggered as another dark bolt speared from the shadows at him. Krondi cried out, railing at the imminent death of the beloved runelord of his hold, but Agrin was equal to it and dispelled the bolt with a muttered counter.

His enemies revealed themselves soon after, three robed figures walking nonchalantly through the gorge. A female led the sorcerous coven, sculpting a nimbus of baleful energy in her hands. Krondi was no mageling, but he had fought them before and even he could tell that the female was the mistress. The other two were merely there to augment her powers.

She unleashed the magicks she had crafted and a vast serpent fashioned from bloody light painted the gorge in a visceral glow before it snapped hungrily at the runelord.

Once more Agrin foiled her sorcery, a rune of warding extinguishing on his staff as he brandished it towards the elemental. She shrieked as the enchantment failed, recoiling as if burned, and pressed a trembling hand to her forehead before snarling at the male sorcerer in the coven as he went to help her.

Despite the fresh tipping of the scales against then, Krondi felt renewed hope. He didn’t have long to appreciate it as the leader of the elves came at him with a pair of sickle blades. The other was still grounded and watched eagerly from his prone position.

From the corner of his eye, Krondi saw Agrin assailed by dark magic as the three sorcerers vented their power as one. Runes flared and died on his staff as the iron was slowly denuded of its magical defences. Outnumbered, the runelord was finding it hard to retaliate, just as Krondi could only fend off the silvered blades of the elf leader intent on his death.

‘Submit,’ the elf snarled in crude Khazalid through clenched teeth, ‘and I’ll kill you quickly.’

Krondi was shocked at the use of his native tongue but knew that some elves had learned it, or tried to.

‘Unbaraki!’ he bit back, invoking the dwarf word for ‘oathbreaker’, for these bandits or whatever they were had broken the treaty between their races and sealed the deed with blood.

‘Your oaths mean nothing to me, runt. I’ll cut your coarse little tongue from your mouth-’

Krondi finally struck his enemy. In the elf’s fervour he had left an opening, one an old soldier like Krondi could exploit. Ribs snapped in the elf’s chest, broken by a hammer blow that the dwarf punched into his midriff.

Mastering the pain, the elf rallied but was on the back foot as the dwarf pressed his advantage. Laughter issued from somewhere close, though it sounded oddly resonant and was obscured by the near-deafening magical duel between Agrin and the coven.

Like he was swatting turnips with a mattock, Krondi swung his hammer with eager abandon. Kill the elf now, bludgeon him with sheer fury and power, or he would be dead like the others. He couldn’t match the elf for skill. Krondi knew this but felt no shame in it, as his father had taught him humility and pragmatism, so that left only brute strength.

His resurgence was only momentary. Dodging an overhead swing intended to break his shoulder the elf weaved aside and trapped the hammer between the razor edges of his sickle blades. With a grunt the elf cut in opposite directions, shearing the haft apart and disarming the dwarf.

Looking on despairing at his sundered hammer, the weapon that in all his years of loyal gatekeeping had never broken, Krondi scarcely noticed the twin blades rammed into his chest.

‘-and then gut you like a fish,’ the elf concluded, a grimace etched permanently on his face from the crushed ribs in his chest.

Krondi spat into it, a greasy gob of blood-flecked phlegm that ran down the elf’s cheek and drew a sneer to already upcurled lips. The dwarf slid off the blades, life leaving him as he hit the ground. He was on his side and tried to claw at the earth, to catch some of it in his numbing grasp and know he would be returning to the world below and his ancestors. Through his muddying vision that crawled with black clouds at the edges, though the storm had long since cleared, Krondi saw Agrin on his knees.

Teeth clenched, the runelord was defiant to the last but the wound he’d been dealt when his guard was down was telling upon him. It was to be his end.

Agrin met Krondi’s gaze across the litter of dwarf and elf dead.

‘A great doom…’ he mouthed before three tentacles like the arms of some kraken forged of eternal darkness impaled him and then tore him apart. Even meteoric armour couldn’t spare the runelord that fate, and so another ancient light of the dwarf race was snuffed out.

Krondi slumped, his final breaths coming quick and shallow. A chill was upon him now, but he heard singing, the crackle of a hearth and the voices of dwarfs he knew but had never met. They were calling his name, calling him to the table where his place was waiting. But as he descended, leaving the world above to embrace those that came before, Agrin’s words lingered and seemed to travel through Gazul’s Gate itself into the dwarfen underworld.

A great doom…

Sevekai slumped, the pain in his chest from the two broken ribs besting him finally. He scowled at Kaitar who was still lying on the ground, though now more reclining than upended by the dwarf’s crude magicks.

‘Why did you not aid me?’ Sevekai’s tone was accusatory. He still held the bloodied sickle blades unsheathed.

‘Don’t threaten me, Sevekai,’ said Kaitar, rising and dusting off his tunic. ‘You wanted to kill the runt, you said as much to me with your eyes. If it proved tougher prey than you had first envisaged that is no fault of mine.’

‘I heard you laughing when he struck me.’

‘From sheer surprise that the runt landed such a blow. You grew overconfident, but it gave you the focus you needed to finish it.’

Sevekai wanted to kill Kaitar. He should kill him, plunge his sickle blades into his heart and end the impudent little worm, but he didn’t. He told himself it was because they had lost too many of their number already but that wasn’t the truth, not really. The truth was that he was afraid of the warrior, of the fathomless black in his eyes, the kind of ennui only shared by converts of the assassin temples, the devotees of Khaine.

Cursing in elvish, Sevekai let it go and turned to the slain dwarfs.

As before on the Old Dwarf Road he was careful, ensuring there was nothing in the murders that would suggest anything other than asur involvement. He suspected most of the stunted creatures wouldn’t be able to tell druchii from asur anyway, but it still paid to be careful. Couple this most recent carnage with the acts of killing and sabotage happening all across the Old World and the prospects for continued peace looked bleak. It should have satisfied him. It did not.

Touring the massacre he was genuinely dismayed to see the charred corpse of Numenos amongst the dead, if only because it meant he’d need to find another scout from whoever was left. Including Kaitar and Sevekai himself, only five of the shades remained. Enough to do what still needed to be accomplished but preciously short on contingency. There were other cohorts, of course there were. Clandestine saboteurs were hidden the length and breadth of the Old World.

In his private moments, the few he was afforded and only when he was certain the dark lord wasn’t watching, Sevekai wondered at the sagacity of the plan. Unfolding perfectly at present, it would allegedly do much to further druchii ambition but Sevekai could not see that end, not yet. His doubt troubled him more than the thought all of this might come to naught.

‘You appear conflicted, Sevekai,’ a female voice purred from in front of him. Masking his emotions perfectly, Sevekai averted his gaze from the blank stares of the dead and met her equally cold expression.

She was darkly beautiful, wearing a form-fitting robe of midnight black. Her skin was porcelain white but she carried a countenance that was hard as marble with a stare to rival that of a gorgon. Hair the colour of hoarfrost cascaded down her slender back as she near paraded in front of him, her spine exposed in a long, narrow slit down robes that also barely cupped her small breasts. She was lithe and ravishing but sorcery had stolen what youth and immortality had given her. Ashniel, her little protégé witch, had the same snow white hair, but did not carry the subtle weight of age about the eyes, neck and cheekbones.

Lust and wariness warred ambivalently in Sevekai, for the last time he had shared her bed he had left with a blade wound from a ritual athame in his back. Not lightly did one consort with Drutheira of the coven, especially if you ever questioned her prowess as a lover. It was meant as a tease, a playful rejoinder, but Drutheira was not one for games. Some scars, Sevekai knew, went deeper than a blade.

The sorceress’s mood was predictably belligerent.

‘You also look weathered, my love.’ No druchii could say ‘my love’ with such venom as her. A deadly adder could not achieve the same vitriol should it be given voice to speak. ‘Are those ribs cracked by any chance? Has your peerless talent with your little knives finally been exposed for the parlour trick it really is?’

‘I have missed you too, dearest.’ Sevekai’s smile was far from warm, and had more in kind with a snake than an elf. ‘I expected to see you sooner.’

‘Other matters required my attention that I do not have to explain to you.’

Though it pained him, Sevekai gave a mocking bow. ‘I am your servant, mistress.’

Drutheira was gaunt from spellweaving, but she was also injured. A red-raw scar like an angry vein throbbed on her forehead.

Sevekai gestured to the wound. ‘Seems I am not the only one not to have escaped the battle unscathed.’ Her hands were also hurt, burned by the dwarf’s bound magic.

Drutheira touched the scar, her hands already healing from the minor incantation she’d silently performed, and snarled. Her mood changed again, sarcasm lessening in favour of hateful scorn.

‘Little bastard ripped it from my head.’

‘Ripped what?’ asked Sevekai, briefly regarding the dwarf’s corpse. It was hollowed out, as if long dead and drained of all vitality. Dark magic tended to have that effect on the living.

‘The incantation, the spell,’ Drutheira replied, apparently annoyed at Sevekai’s ignorance. ‘It was charnel blood magic and he took it from my mind and destroyed it.’

The others in the coven did not speak, but like jackals they examined every detail of her sudden weakness. Drutheira sensed their murderous ambition, spoken on the Wind of Dhar still roiling through the gorge, and was quick to reassert her dominance.

Malchior, her male suckling, was the perfect example. She thrust her hand at him, turning it into a claw, and Malchior was contorted by a sudden agony.

‘I see your thoughts,’ she hissed, flicking a scathing glance at Ashniel who quailed despite her ostensible truculence.

Veins stood out on Malchior’s forehead like death-adders writhing beneath his skin. He fought to speak, to muster something by way of contrition that would make the pain stop. Instead, he managed to stare. His eyes were oval rings of red, burning flesh. Rage, fear, desperate pleading for the agony to end roiled across his face. Spittle ran down his cheek, drooling through clenched teeth.

‘I could churn you inside out, flay the flesh off you,’ Drutheira hissed, seizing him by the neck of his robe and dragging him to her until mere inches parted them.

She glared, revealing to him the manifold agonies that awaited him, let Ashniel see it too.

‘Crippling, isn’t it?’

Malchior barely managed a nod. ‘Druth…’ Crimson flecked his lips as he tried pathetically to speak.

She leaned into his ear, whispering, ‘Do you see how insignificant you are to me?’ before she bit his ear and then looked up at Ashniel.

‘Excruciating… Would you like to try?’

The young sorceress was already shaking her head. Malchior was on his knees, retching. Drutheira released him, and he collapsed.

‘Never put your hands on me again,’ she snarled.

Malchior found the strength to breathe then grovel. He nodded weakly.

‘I only meant-’

Drutheira cut him off with a raised fist, the promise of further torture.

Malchior bowed and spoke no more.

‘Prepare the rite of communion,’ she snapped, sneering at them both. ‘Lord Malekith will know all that has been done in his name.’

Dismissed, Malchior and Ashniel went to find a sacrifice. Some of the dwarfs yet lived, if only just. Although slowed, their blood would still be fresh.

‘Your apprentices, or whatever they are,’ said Sevekai, ‘are viperous little creatures. You should be careful, Drutheira.’

She pouted at him. ‘Is that concern for my welfare I am hearing, Sevekai?’

His face grew stern like steel. ‘What are you really doing here? You need no scout through these lands.’

‘Performing our dark lord’s bidding, as are you I presume. “To each coven a cohort of shades”, you remember now, don’t you?’ She regarded the runelord’s desiccated body. ‘Fortunate that I arrived when I did, it would seem.’

‘Do not expect any gratitude.’

‘Must we fight, lover?’ she purred.

Sevekai laughed, utterly without mirth.

‘I still feel your love, my dear. It is a wound in my back that is taking its time to heal.’ He winced, his mock humour jarring his damaged ribs.

Drutheira stepped closer. ‘Then at least let me ease your suffering…’

She outstretched her hand, but Sevekai recoiled from her touch.

‘Don’t be such a child,’ she chided him.

Still wary, he relented and showed her the side of his chest where the dwarf had struck him.

‘Now,’ she warned, ‘be still.’

A warm glow filled Sevekai, just hot enough to burn but the pain was tolerable. When it abated again, his ribs were healed.

‘Miraculous…’ he breathed.

Drutheira clenched her fist as he smiled and one of the ribs broke as if she’d crushed it.

Crying out, Sevekai glared daggers at her.

‘Hell-bitch!’

‘A reminder,’ she said, all her genial pretence evaporating into an expression of pure ice, ‘that I can do that to you at any time.’

‘Duly noted,’ said Sevekai. Behind, Kaitar was approaching.

Drutheira’s gaze snapped to regard him.

‘Who is that?’ she asked.

Sevekai thought he detected a hint of anxiety in her voice, even fear, but dismissed it almost at once.

‘He is no one. Just a shade from Karond Kar.’

She lingered on the distant warrior for a moment, and Sevekai took her interest for lust. He tried not to feel jealous, but his fist clenched at the slight.

Drutheira was still staring.

‘What?’

‘It’s nothing.’

Sevekai’s eyes narrowed. ‘Drutheira, are you all right?’

‘We are not staying,’ she said, turning her attention back to Sevekai.

‘You have just arrived. Do you tire of my company already?’

‘Yes, I do.’ She beckoned him. ‘Come forwards.’

Sevekai obeyed and like a striking serpent Drutheira cut his cheek with her athame.

‘Whore!’

‘Now my blood mingles with yours,’ she told him. ‘In it you will find your purpose.’

Still wincing from the burning pain of the wound, Sevekai saw a host of hidden roads in his mind’s eye. Such seldom trodden paths could only be found by those who were given knowledge of them by their keepers. Malekith possessed such knowledge, garnered long ago from an old friend. Given unto Drutheira by the dark lord, she now passed it on to Sevekai.

‘We will accomplish more and be less conspicuous if we are apart. My task requires craft that you don’t possess, my love.’ She smiled like a serpent.

‘Beguiling dwarf lords and marking outposts for your riders to burn down,’ he smirked. ‘Indeed, such craft is required for that subtle work.’

‘You have your orders,’ she snapped. ‘See them done.’

Sevekai was still wiping the blood from his cheek. ‘You need not worry about that, Drutheira.’

‘Just conceal our presence here if you can,’ she said, turning on her heel and heading further into the gorge to find the others.

Kaitar had stopped halfway and was standing amidst the corpses. He was just looking, no expression, no acknowledgement beyond what was in his eyes.

Sevekai hailed the others, suspecting that Drutheira was leaving much earlier than she had initially intended. He wondered if it had anything to do with the warrior from Karond Kar.

They hauled the dwarfs off the road, dragged them into the shadows created by the overhanging rocks. Any that still clung tenaciously to life were quickly ended. Others would find them in time, would see the elven arrow shafts sticking out of their bodies and believe the asur had done this.

A fire would sweep through these lands, Sevekai knew. It would be as embers at first, for every flame must begin with a tiny insignificant spark. Soon this would become a blaze, a conflagration that would consume the elves and the dwarfs, drown them in a bloody war from which there would be no return.