The Great Betrayal

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The First Siege of Tor Alessi

For six days, Liandra’s morning had begun the same.

Clanking armour as the wearers stomped in unison, the stink of their bodies potent on the breeze, the reek of their dirty cook fires, their furnaces, the soot and ash that seemed to paste the very air, make it thick and greasy. Worst of all were their voices, the crude, guttural bellowing, the flatulent chorus as they rose from their pits, the holes they had dug or the tents they had staved for sleeping in.

‘Khazuk!’

She knew this word, the one they were bleating now, together and in anger. It put her teeth on edge, made her want to unsheathe her sword and begin killing. Liandra did not speak Dwarfish, she found the language base and flat like much of what the mud-dwellers built, but she knew a call to battle and death when she heard it.

Every morning it was like this and every morning, and deep into the night she had endured it. Now, at last, she would get a chance to do something about it.

In a high vault of the Dragon Tower, she looked out onto the battlefield beyond the walls of Tor Alessi at the dwarf host. They marched in thick phalanxes, shields together, axes held upright like stunted ugly statues.

Stout-looking siege towers rolled between the squares of armoured warriors. On a ridge line far behind the advancing army she saw their bulky war engines, strings tautened, ready to loose. Several carried score marks, the deep gouges of eagle claws. There were fewer now than the dwarfs began with, but still a great many remained. A thick line of crossbows sat in front of the machineries, a little farther down the incline, taking shelter amongst scattered rocks.

It would not avail them, elven eyes could see and kill a dwarf hiding in rock easily enough.

And they were digging. How like the mud-dwellers to burrow underground like small-eyed vermin. Like the rocks, there was an answer to that too. She had spoken with Caeris Starweaver and knew of his plan to sunder the tunnels with the dwarfs still in them. Liandra sneered; they were persistent creatures, seemingly content to batter at Tor Alessi’s walls until they broke. Given time, under such constant pressure, they probably would, but then she knew what was coming across the sea and what would happen when it arrived.

She looked towards their own forces and saw the disciplined ranks of spearmen arrayed on the wall. Behind them and below were ranks of archers, their spotters in position between the spearmen to guide their arrows. Several mages had joined the warriors on the battlements and there were small cohorts of Lothern axemen between the spears too. For doubtless, the dwarfs would try to climb again and a heavy blade severs rope more easily than a spear tip.

Some of the refugees from Kor Vanaeth, a pitiful number, swelled the elven host. They were positioned at one of the gates. From the disposition of their forces, the dwarfs looked to be assaulting all three at once. It had taken much resolve not to take flight on Vranesh’s back before now and burn a ragged hole in the mud-dwellers’ ranks, but that would not win the battle. She needed to choose her fights more carefully than that.

‘Princess Athinol…’ One of Prince Arlyr’s retainers was waiting for her in the tower’s portal. He cast a fearful glance into the stygian dark of the vast tower at the hulking presence spewing sulphurous ash into the chamber.

Arlyr was commander of the Silver Helm Knights and like all young lordlings, he was impatient to sally forth, but required a distraction.

Liandra had decided to be much more than that.

‘Tell him I am almost ready,’ she said, donning her war helm and turning from the battlefield. It wouldn’t be long before she’d see it again, this time on leather wings and spitting fire.

Dull thunder rumbled from above, shaking the roots of Ari and spilling earth on the miners. They were close, almost to the wall. Six days of hard toil had almost come to fruition.

Nadri wiped a clod from his brow, spitting out the dirt before hacking down with his pick. It was tough work, but preferable to the battlefield. A muffled clamour was all that reached them from above, and even that was barely audible through the digging song and the thud of sundered earth.

‘Ho-hai, ho-hai…’ Nadri joined in with the sonorous refrain, reminded of the attack on Kor Vanaeth’s gate. Rise and fall, rise and fall, his pickaxe was almost pendulous. The diggers cut the rock, the gatherers took it away in barrels to shore up the foundations. Runners brought stone flasks of tar-thick beer. Used to the finer ales, Nadri found the brew caustic but at least it was fortifying. Every miner took a pull and their spirits and strength were renewed. They cut by lantern light, the lamps hooked on spikes rammed into the tunnel walls with every foot the dwarfs dug out. Just a few more and they would breach.

Behind the miners were a wedge of the heaviest-armoured warriors Nadri had ever seen. He had heard tales of the ironbreakers, the dwarfs that guarded the old tunnels and forgotten caves of the Ungdrin road, but had never seen one face to face. Up close, they were imposing and seemingly massive. Hulking gromril war plate layered their bodies and their beards were black as coal, thick and wiry. Hard, granite-edged eyes glinted behind their half-masked helms, waiting for the moment when the digging was done and the fighting would begin.

Rest over, Nadri gave the flask back to the runner with nodded thanks, and returned to the rock face.

Soon, very soon now.

The iron ramp slammed down into the breach with enough force to knock the defenders onto their backs.

The dwarfs raised shields immediately as they were met by an arrow storm.

Morgrim roared as if his voicing his defiance could turn the shafts aside, and ploughed forwards.

‘Uzkul!’

The reply came as a roar of affirmation from Morgrim’s warriors, who surged alongside their thane into a host of elven spears.

It was the third assault in six days. The dwarfs had used probing attacks after the night bombardment, picking at weak points, gauging the strength of the defences and defenders. The east gate was deemed the most likely point of breach, it was the most distant of the routes into the city and therefore less well fortified. For the last three days, Gotrek Starbreaker had amassed forces in the east, concealed by trenchworks. Stray barrages from the stone throwers had weakened the gate house around the towers. Great clay pots of pitch were being readied to weaken it further.

Morgrim took the north wall, volunteering to lead a cohort in one of the siege towers and onto the very battlements of Tor Alessi. It was to be a hard push — the High King wanted the elves to think this was the main point of assault. Morgrim was happy to oblige.

Half-sundered by their war machines, chunks of battlement broke away as the dwarfs tramped over it. One poor soul lost his footing and fell to his death many feet below. No one in the front ranks watched him but a grudgekeeper in the rearguard called out the dwarf’s name to ensure he would be remembered.

‘Uzkul!’ Morgrim yelled again, bludgeoning a spearman’s skull as he fended off another with his shield. He drew one elf in, butting him hard across the nose and splitting his face apart. Another dwarf finished the spearman when he dropped his guard, recoiling in pain.

An axe blade dug into his weapon’s haft and Morgrim shook it free, snarling. He kicked out, snapping the elf’s shin with a hobnailed boot, before burying his hammer head into the warrior’s neck. Blood fountained up in a ragged arc, painting a clutch of spearmen who pressed on despite their disgust.

Morgrim smashed one in the shoulder with his shield and took a spear in the thigh for his trouble. Smacking it away before the wielder could thrust, he incapacitated the second elf with a low blow to the groin. The backhand took a third spearman in the torso. A dwarf warrior next to him fell in the same moment before one of his fellow clansmen stepped in to take his place.

Somewhere in the frenzy, Morgrim and his warriors gained the battlements. Elves came at them from either side, wielding spears and silver swords. The small knot of dwarfs, desperately trying to expand outwards and establish a foothold, was quickly corralled.

Barely before Morgrim had Tor Alessi stone under his feet, a fair-haired captain carrying a jewelled axe and a small shield hit him hard. Daggers of pain flared in his shoulder but the runes on the dwarf’s armour held against the elf magic and Morgrim kept his arm. He replied with an overhand swing, denting the elf’s shield before uppercutting with his own. Spitting blood, the elf’s chin came up and Morgrim barged into him, barrelling the captain over the battlements and to his death. It only seemed to galvanise the other elves further.

The dwarfs gained maybe three feet. It was tough going. Arrows whistled in at them from below, piercing eyes and necks, studding torsos like spines. Out the corner of his eye, Morgrim saw Brungni spin like a nail, three white shafts embedded in his back. The inner side of the wall was open, and a yawning gap stretched into a courtyard below. It left the dwarfs dangerously exposed, a fact Brungni learned to his cost. In his death throes he handed off the banner to Tarni Engulfson before falling into a riot of elven spears below.

‘Don’t drop that,’ Morgrim warned.

The young dwarf nodded, clutching grimly to the banner pole.

A hastily-erected line of shields protected the battling dwarfs from the worst of the elven volleys but it made fighting to the front and rear more difficult.

Farther down the wall, Morgrim saw another siege tower reach the battlements. A plume of flame fashioned into an effigy of a great eagle engulfed it before the ramp was even released, burning the dwarfs within. Cracking wood, the sound of splitting timbers raked the air as the tower collapsed in on itself, killing those warriors waiting on the platforms below. It tumbled slowly like a felled oak and was lost from Morgrim’s sight.

There would be no reinforcement on the wall, not yet.

He lifted his rune hammer to rally the spirits of his warriors. By now it was a familiar cry.

‘Uzkul!’

Death.

Gotrek watched the battle from atop his Throne of Power.

Below, his bearers were unyielding, their strength unfailing. It needed to be; throne and king were a heavy burden in more ways than one.

Several of the siege towers had reached the ramparts of the north wall and two of the gates were under assault with battering rams and grappling hooks. A sortie of elven horse riders had stalled the third assault, Thagdor’s longbeards currently waging a contest of attrition with the high-helmed knights.

Gotrek would have bet his entire treasure hoard on the victors of that fight, but it was hard to smile when the elves were making them pay so dearly for every foot.

From the east flank, quarrellers maintained a regular barrage from behind their mantlets. Behind them on a grassy ridge, the war machines continued to loose with devastating effect. Several sections of the wall were broken and split, but not enough to force a breach. They needed the tunnels to undermine them, bring the foundations crashing down into a pool of fire as the dwarfs burned the elven stone to ash.

Zonzharr was potent dwarf alchemy that could reduce even the stoutest rock to blackened dust. The miners had pots of the stuff, hauled into the tunnels by pack mules, ready to be rolled down to the rock face when the digging was done.

Overhead the sky darkened as the elven mages practised their foul art. Summoned fire blazed into one of the siege towers, burning it to a scorched stump. A second conflagration followed but dispersed against the solemn chanting of the runesmiths.

Most of the elder lords of the rune had not joined their kings in battle. Mysteriously, they were nowhere to be found, some having left their holds for places unknown. Gotrek knew better than to question it. Ranuld Silverthumb had been runelord of Everpeak for as long as he could remember, from before even his father Gurni had reigned. The servants of Thungi had their own ways the High King could only guess at. If the ancient lords were absent, it was for good reason.

It did not mean the dwarfs were without magic of their own, however.

‘There is one more weapon in my arsenal,’ said Hrekki Ironhandson whom Gotrek had joined on the hillside not far from the war machines.

‘Summon it and its keeper,’ said the High King. His eyes never left the battlefield, for somewhere in the chaos was his only son.

Snorri fought at the east gate under a mantle of iron. The stout shaft of a battering ram swung between his cohort of warriors, smacking fat splinters from the wood.

‘We’ll make a dirty mess of their door,’ he promised, shouting to be heard, ‘and then we’ll make a mess of them. Khazuk!’

‘Khazuk!’ chimed the warriors together, heaving the ram back for another blow. The end was fashioned into the simulacrum of an ancestor head, Grimnir, his beard wrought into spikes. It gored deep, tearing at the gate.

Boiling oil, alchemical fire, swathes of arrows all fell upon Snorri’s warriors but they didn’t even flinch. These were hearthguard, king’s men, and they would not shirk from the deadliest of battles. Either the gate would fall or they would.

A prickling sensation in Snorri’s beard made him look up. The view was narrow, and the prince caught snatches through the slits between the tiles in the roof.

‘Spellcrafter,’ he growled.

Above, an elven mage was conjuring. She wore a pale robe, emblazoned with stars, and a moon-shaped circlet sat upon her brow. But it was the crackling staff to which Snorri’s eye was drawn, and the tempest waxing around it.

‘Spellcrafter!’ he roared this time, inciting a dour chorus as the dwarfs invoked earth, stone and metal to retard the harmful magicks.

A hundred dwarfs clamouring at the east gate chanted in unison. It began slowly but grew into an almost palpable wall of defiance. A hundred became two hundred, then three hundred until all the warriors assaulting the east gate were united in purpose.

But elven sorcery came from the Old Ones, it was High magic and could not so easily be undone. Eldritch winds were already clawing at the heathguard, tugging at their limbs, buffeting them into their fellow dwarfs. The chant faltered. Rain lashed down, sharp as knives, impelled by the gale. The slashing deluge turned the ground beneath the dwarfs’ feet to sludge. Several warriors were fouled in it, some even to their necks. Easy prey for the archers whose arrows flew with storm force, piercing armour like it was parchment.

Despite his best efforts, Snorri could feel his body sinking into the mire. Hail stung his face, opening a cut on his cheek. He reached out, letting his hand axe hang by the thong on his wrist, hauling a hearthguard to his feet.

‘Up, brother,’ he growled. ‘Stone and steel.’

‘Stone and steel, my prince,’ the breathless hearthguard replied.

Snorri turned, and roared to the others, ‘Heads down and heave!’

One warrior was blown free of the ram’s protective mantle. The elven archers seized upon him, pinioning the dwarf with a dozen arrows before he could so much as raise his shield. Another, sunk almost to the waist, was left behind and fought defiantly until a shaft took him in the neck and he spat his last.

‘Thagging bast-’ Snorri began, but the tempest had them now.

Rivets fixing the mantle to the ram frame were loosening. A flap of metal swung up briefly before clamping down again. In those few seconds, four hearthguard warriors lay dead with arrows jutting from their bodies.

Wrenching his boots free of the mud, Snorri stepped up to take the place of one. Clutching the iron handle of the ram, he pulled it back.

The hefty wooden log lurched, swinging wildly in the gale. Its violent backswing almost pushed the prince out from the mantle. The wind was rising, building into a fist of elemental force that would punch the roof of the battering ram clean off.

Drowned in mud or condemned to death by elven arrows, neither was a favourable ending worthy of song. The gate was weakening, Snorri could hear it even above the storm in the protestations of the wood. A few more solid hits and it would buckle. But only if there was time before the battering ram was torn apart.

Behind them to the south, distant thunder was booming.

Snorri groaned under his breath, ‘What now?’ before he realised it had come from the dwarf ranks.

Lightning sheared through the storm dark a moment later. It struck the elven battlements, a second arcing bolt spearing the elven mage. Her death scream echoed loudly before her scorched body crumpled and the tempest lifted.

Snorri tried not to be relieved. There was no time for it. A minor reprieve, nothing more. The real fight lurked behind the gate, and he planned to smash it wide open.

‘Khazuk!’

Twenty hearthguard heaved and the ram swung back.

Grimnir snarled and the angry god swung forwards, baring his teeth.

But the east gate held.

Fundrinn Stormhand called the lightning back. He was standing on an Anvil of Doom, feet braced apart. Great runes of power crackled and flashed across the anvil’s pellucid silver surface, and the storm lived briefly in the runesmith’s eyes, in the rivulets of magic coursing through his jagged red beard before earthing harmlessly.

But as soon as the storm lightning had faded, Fundrinn was calling fresh elemental power into being. It began as a mote of flame in his outstretched palm but as he spoke the rune rites the fire grew until the runesmith could no longer hold it and was forced to set the conflagration loose. What began as a flaming wind swelled into a tidal wave of burning vengeance, a score of spectral dwarf faces snarling and biting at its fiery crest.

Fundrinn cried out, ‘Zharrum!’, coaxing and shaping the raging inferno with sweeping arcs of his runestaff. ‘Zharrum un uzkul a elgi!’

Across the battlefield, a second voice bellowed. It spoke unto the deep earth, making oaths of the great ancestors. One of the anvils of Zhufbar rolled forwards, impelled by the will of its keeper Gorik Stonebeard, and joined the magical convocation. He had no staff, but carried a rune hammer. As he smacked the hammer head down upon the anvil, the deep earth answered and a rippling tremor shuddered from beneath him.

‘Duraz um uzkul a elgi!’

The tremor rolled outwards at the invocation, building in ferocity, splitting the ground underfoot.

The lords of Karak Varn and Zhufbar crafted in perfect magical concert, unleashing hellfire and earthquakes against the elven host.

Gotrek felt their power through his beard, in his fingertips, along his teeth, and grinned.

‘Burn them, bring them down!’

Liandra was barely in the saddle when the quake hit. Dust and grit spilled from the vaulted ceiling of the Dragon Tower, shaking its walls violently.

‘Vranesh!’ she urged and the beast tore up into the vaults, head down, smashing through the roof. There was no time to guide the dragon through the narrow aperture of the tower. The small minaret that served as Vranesh’s rookery was collapsing. Mere appendage to the grand tower itself, it would still have buried dragon and rider.

Exploding from the shattered tower, Vranesh exulted and Liandra with him as he tore into the sky. Empathic joy rippled through the elf’s body, and she embraced a thrill of violent intent as she beheld the dwarfs below.

‘Higher, higher…’ she coaxed, guiding Vranesh into the ice cold skies, daggering through cloud until they were lost from sight. There they roamed, Vranesh trailing tendrils of smoke from his maw in hungry anticipation.

In the solitude high above Tor Alessi, Liandra’s thoughts returned to Imladrik. She remembered their last conversation in the gorge, the widening gulf she felt growing between them, and wondered where he was now and if he had thought of her since then. For a moment, the iron grip she had on her lance loosened and she considered that vengeance would not be an adequate substitute for her grief. Then she thought of Kor Vanaeth and her people, dying at the hands of the cruel dwarfs, and her resolve became a thing of unyielding ice.

Liandra leaned over in her saddle, roving the enemy army with her eyes for a target.

‘There,’ she hissed. ‘Dive, Vranesh!’

Silver lightning breached the cold winter cloud as a beast of old myth fell upon the war machines.

Gotrek had barely ordered his bearers forwards before the dragon had torn up three engines and devoured their crew. Snapping wood, torn metal and shouting dwarfs merged into one discordant sound. Screwing up his courage, a thane of the Varn rushed at the beast with his rune axe trailing fire, but was dispatched by a lance strike through the heart before he’d done much more than heft the blade.

An elf maid, armoured in dragon scale. She gutted three more dwarfs before her eyes met with the High King’s. Bolt throwers further down the line of war engines were already turning as the elf’s beast started in on the quarrellers. It led with its forelegs, gouging a deep, ruddy furrow in the dwarfs’ ranks, their hand axes and crossbow bolts unable to penetrate its dragonscale.

Gotrek snarled at the nearest ballista crew, knowing he wouldn’t reach the elf dragon rider in time to save the quarrellers from being devoured by her mount. ‘Shoot that elgi bitch!’

Its strong pinions flexing, the dragon took flight with its rider as the first of the iron shafts flew, cutting air. She dodged a second volley too, the beast snapping one in mid-flight before it turned to spew fire.

Heat ten times more potent than a forge furnace washed over Gotrek and his charges, but the magic of the Throne of Power kept them safe. Singed but alive, he glowered through a wall of flickering haze at the fleeing beast and its rider.

‘Crozzled my bloody beard,’ he growled. ‘Drakk,’ he said as the fire died, now just a a blackened ring on the hillside. ‘I hate drakk.’ He rapped on the arm of his throne with a ringed fist. ‘Forward. We make for the east gate. Furgil and the others best be ready. Thurbad,’ said Gotrek, looking down to his captain of the hearthguard and the seven iron-bearded warriors that accompanied him. ‘Gather fifty warriors, including the steelbeards. You’re with me. Leave the rest.’

‘But you’ll be open to attack, my king.’

‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, eyeing the dragon as it dived down to spew more fire, ‘and if we’re lucky, she’ll take the bait.’

On the north wall the fighting had grown fiercer. Elf and dwarf lay dead and dying upon the battlements, gutted and staved in, broken and cleaved. Two great civilisations were destroying one another, yet no one cared to notice.

Morgrim’s hammer felt heavy as he bludgeoned but not from the heft of the weapon, he could wield it all day and night if needed. It was the blood upon it, the slaughter that weighed the dwarf down.

A screech that resonated across the sky, tearing it open, shook Morgrim from his reverie. An upper tower had collapsed and something leathern and terrible had shot out from it like a battering ram.

‘Drakk!’

His warriors cried out and balked when they saw the dragon smash through the tower roof. Pieces of stone, shattered chips of tile cascaded onto them but were a paltry shower compared to the deluge that slammed down into the elves amassing in the courtyard. Fixed on the beast, the dwarfs barely paid any heed. One abandoned all thoughts of defence altogether and found a spear in his gut for his trouble. Another jumped off the battlements, mind crushed by fear. Dwarfs were a hardy race, and their history with dragons was long and bloody, but such primordial beasts were terrifying even for the sons of Grungni.

Morgrim marshalled his courage, still fighting hard with an eye on the sky as the beast wheeled above. ‘Hold fast!’ he yelled at the clanners. ‘Stone and steel!’

Gritting their teeth, the rest of the dwarfs gripped their axe hafts and fought on.

Through maddened slashes of the battle, Morgrim saw the dragon savage the war engines before turning its wrath onto the High King. His heart quickened for a moment when his liege-lord was engulfed by flame but then returned to normal when he saw the High King was unscathed.

Soaring skywards, the beast pulled out of bow range before coming down hard on the tunnellers. Dragon fire stitched across their ranks, igniting the pots of zonzharr and pushing a ferocious inferno down Grik’s gullet. Morgrim was forced away before he could see more, but the image of burning dwarfs staggering from the tunnel mouth was etched into his mind.

With the wrenching of stone Grik collapsed, releasing a pall of dust and trapping the survivors inside with the fire.

Below the western gatehouse, Nadri toiled at the face of Ari. Strong elven foundations were making the last few feet hard, but it meant they were close. Hacking with their picks and shovels, the miners had carved out a subterranean cavern that was wide enough to admit a small army. With over four hundred ironbreakers waiting silently in the wings, it needed to be.

They were led by one of the Everpeak thanes, a foreign-looking dwarf whom Nadri had seen with the prince on several occasions and so assumed was part of his inner circle. Unlike the ironbreakers, his armour was light and of a strange design, depicting effigies of creatures Nadri wasn’t familiar with. The thane seemed to be waiting for something, as though he knew they were about to breach.

A lodewarden called the sappers back. The time for digging was over, fire would do the rest. Lighting the zonzharr, the miners at the end of the tunnel retreated and took shelter behind barriers of wutroth. With a grunt, three dwarfs from the Copperfist clan rolled the great clay urn of the zonzharr down the tunnel. When it smashed against the end it immolated the base of the gatehouse wall in a flare of angry crimson fire. A cheer went up as the foundation rock broke apart, dumping earth and flagstones into the gap the miners had hewn with their pickaxes.

‘Khazuk!’ The chant resonated through the ironbreakers’ closed helms as they rushed through the breach, led by the thane.

Nadri and the other sappers stood aside to let the cavalcade of armoured bodies through.

Jorgin Blackfinger, lodewarden of Barak Varr, climbed onto a boulder so he could be seen and heard by all the clans.

‘Ready for another tough chuffing slog, lads?’

Nadri bellowed with his fellow clanners. ‘Ho-hai!’

Nearly two hundred miners followed behind the ironbreakers, brandishing picks and shovels. The light streaming through the breach was hazy, thick with grey dust, but the clash of blades was clear enough.

The elves had lost their gatehouse, a part of it at least, but their warriors were ready and willing to defend the breach. And above the carnage of the battle, a sound, deep and resonant… A primordial roar.

Snorri heard the dragon rather than saw it. Enclosed beneath the mantle of the battering ram, it was hard to see much of anything other than the back of the dwarf in front and the shoulder of the one to your side.

Words spoken what seemed like an age ago returned to the young prince, plucking at his pride.

Dawi barazen ek dreng drakk, un riknu.

A dragon slayer, one destined to become king.

Snorri felt the pull of destiny. It was slipping through his grasp.

He tried to turn, find the beast through the slit of vision afforded to him beneath the mantle, but it was impossible. The ram was moving under its own momentum, him with it. Apparently, fate was too. All he caught was snatches of sky, of armoured dwarfs embattled.

The beast cried out again, a rush of flame spat from its maw easy to discern even above the din of the assault. Burning flesh resolved on the breeze.

Trapped in the throng, battering at the east gate, Snorri railed.

But there was nothing he could do.

And then, like a magma flow breaching through the crust, the gate cracked apart and the dwarfs flooded forwards. Snorri went with them, hurled along by furious momentum. Behind him, he heard the shouts of other warriors joining the fray.

The goad was obvious. Liandra saw it as clearly as the lance in her armoured grip. She imagined ramming it through the old dwarf king’s heart, the one who lorded over the others on his throne of dirty gold. She would make him suffer, but would have to do it soon. Fires caused by the mud-dwellers’ crude magic lit Tor Alessi like lanterns honouring some perverse celebration. For all that she burned, the dwarfs could visit it upon the elves threefold. She needed to redress the balance and was about to rein Vranesh into a sharp dive when the west gatehouse collapsed.

Like armoured ants, dwarfs scurried from below and attacked her kinsmen. She watched an entire cohort of spearmen, injured and confused from the destruction, wiped out by the mud-dwellers in seconds. More were coming, spilling up from the earth like a contagion, a spouting geyser of filth running amok across Tor Alessi’s west quarter.

Liandra hesitated, torn by indecision. She wanted the dwarf king, to gut him like a wild boar on her spear. But the defenders at the west gatehouse were failing. They needed time to restore order, something to regain some momentum.

Spitting a curse, Liandra turned away from the king and went to the aid of her dying kin.

After a welter of colourful swearing, Gotrek gave up on the dragon rider and ordered the host of Everpeak to march. Reacting to the gatehouse collapse, elven reserves stationed behind the city walls were swarming to the west quarter to try and staunch the dwarf incursion. Gotrek gave them just long enough to become entangled in the fight there before he nodded to his horn bearers to herald a second assault.

The east gate was breached, but the throng there led by Snorri hadn’t penetrated far. That was about to change. As the deep, ululating clarion call boomed out dwarf forces hiding amongst the rocks came forth, led by Furgil. The pathfinder had done well to conceal an entire host. Combined with Snorri’s clans and the throng of the High King, it was an army large enough to overrun the entire eastern wall let alone its gate.

Gotrek despaired at the thought of it. They had gone from peace… to this.

‘So arrogant…’

‘My king?’ asked Thurbad, as the rest of the throng joined them in serried ranks to begin the march. ‘You mean the elgi?’

‘No, Thurbad,’ Gotrek replied. ‘I mean us.’

His raised his axe and the dwarfs marched on the east gate.

Through a fog of dust and spilling rock, Nadri clambered out of the breach and up to the surface.

Ironbreakers were already fighting as well as several cohorts of clan warriors led by King Valarik. Seeing the imminent destruction of the wall and gatehouse, the lord of Karak Hirn had urged his throng towards it. The elves were quick to counter, and by the time most of the miners were shoulder to shoulder with their kith and kin, the fighting around the breach was ferocious.

Nadri was still blinking the grit out of his eyes, adjusting to the light, when a shadow roared overhead. Though he didn’t see it, the very presence of the thing above filled his gut with ice and made his limbs leaden. The reek of sulphur wafted over him, burning his nostrils, and he heard the crackle of what sounded like a furnace being stoked only much louder, much deeper.

Someone shouted; he couldn’t make out the exact word, but it sounded like a warning. Then a heavy weight smacked into him, bore him down until day became night and Nadri tasted hot armour on his tongue a moment later. Something was burning. There were screams, smoke, the stench of scorched meat, but it wasn’t boar or elk. It was dwarf. The roar came again, resounded across the breach.

A gruff voice told him, ‘Stay down, until the monster has passed.’

Blood flecked Nadri’s cheek. It was warm and wet. After a few seconds hunkered in the dark, he realised it belonged to one of the ironbreakers shielding him. He went to move, trying to find the injured warrior, but the gruff voice spoke again.

‘Hradi’s dead. Stay down.’

Shouting this time, heard through a press of armoured bodies that were slowly crushing him. Nadri couldn’t breathe. Terrified, he’d been holding his breath and only now realised that he couldn’t draw more into his lungs. He also couldn’t speak to let his saviours know they were killing him.

More shouting and the screech of something old and primordial. It was above him, squatting on the rubble. Nadri could almost see it. He caught a glimpse of scale, a tooth, a baleful yellow eye.

Shadows lingered at the edge of his sight, growing deeper as he crept closer to oblivion. Singing, he heard. It sounded distant and at odds with the battlefield. He tasted beer, rich and dark, and smelled the succulent aroma of roasting pork.

‘Heg…’ It was all he could think of to say, though he wasn’t sure whether the name had actually passed his lips or he had merely imagined speaking. Either way, it was the last word of a wraith, Gazul beckoning him towards the gate, darkness closing in all around…

It was like an anvil being lifted off his back. When he came to, the pressure was gone and Nadri heaved a long, painful breath into his gut. Hours must have passed; the sky above, what little he could see through the smoke, was darkening. He saw the suggestion of walls, a ruined tower, and remembered he had fallen on the battlefield inside the elven city. It took almost a minute before he got up, and even then he only sat. He’d lost his pickaxe. A host of dead ironbreakers surrounded him, cooked in their armour. Their champion’s face was etched with a grimace. They had protected him, in life and death. Deeper into the west quarter of the city, not that far from the breach, a battle was ongoing. Nadri heard shouts to the east, too, and the clash of arms at the northern gate that still held.

His dead saviours weren’t alone. Nadri saw a dwarf he recognised, despite the horrendous burns. Exotic-looking armour was half-melted to his face. A veneer of soot clad his body like chainmail. Tendrils of smoke spiralled from his mouth. The rest of the brotherhood had advanced deeper into the breach, the miners too. Nadri and the others had been left for dead, except he was a sole survivor.

‘Heg…’ This time he knew the word was spoken aloud, and felt tears fill his eyes at his miraculous escape. Even surrounded by death, for the first time Nadri believed he might see his brother again. He was rising, pushing himself up on pain-weary limbs, when something nearby moved.

It coughed, or at least it sounded like a cough but such a thing wasn’t possible. Then he saw the soot, flaking away like a second skin, the flesh beneath pristine and untouched by flame. Nadri gaped and would’ve grabbed for his weapon but the pickaxe was gone, lost in the chaos, and he was too paralysed to reach down for an ironbreaker’s axe. Most were fused to their gauntlets anyway.

‘Valaya,’ he breathed, staggering backwards from the thing that also lived. ‘What are you?’

White teeth arched into a pitiless smile and a voice that was several but really no voice at all said, ‘Nothing you would understand, little dwarf.’

Dusk was painting the horizon, creeping towards the battlefield with soot black fingers. They had held the breach for several hours, drawing the elves away for an attack on the east gate that had yet to breach much farther than its outer defences. Nightfall was approaching rapidly and with it the end of the sixth day and the third assault.

For all that they pushed and pressured, the dwarfs could not sack the city — though it burned badly, there were fires everywhere and even the dragon rider had been put to flight when the heavy ballistae from the Varn had pierced its wings and sent it fleeing.

Snorri raged. For every elf he cut down another took its place, two more ready after that and then three, four. It was endless. And these foes were not like greenskins or the beasts of the forest, or the terrors of the deep places or the high mountains; they were disciplined, determined and utterly convinced of the righteousness of their cause.

Only one thing gave the young prince heart as he heard his father’s war horn sounding the retreat — the elves were wearying. Only a dwarf could match another dwarf in a war of attrition. Dwarfs were stubborn to the point of self destruction. Entire clans had wiped themselves out in proving that point to a rival or out of grudgement. Elves were strong, there could be no denying that now — only a fool would, and Snorri was no fool — but they were not dwarfs, and in the end that would prove their undoing.

So as the throngs departed, leaving the ragged breach in their wake and the elves to contemplate how they might secure it before the dawn’s next attack, Snorri was smiling.

And what was more, the dragon still lived.

For now, the battle was over and Morgrim toured the field of the dead with shovel and pickaxe. As before, the elves granted the dwarfs clemency to tend to their injured and dead, and the dwarfs reciprocated. But even with this tenuous agreement, Morgrim eyed the silent ranks lining the walls of Tor Alessi with something that approached trepidation.

His attention returned to the battlefield as an elf apothecary passed close by to him. Morgrim gave her little heed, but noticed there was no malice in her eyes, just a desire to ease suffering. Considering the dwarfs’ own healers, he wondered just how different they really were to one another when blades and pride weren’t getting in the way.

Shrouded in cloaks of deep purple, a silver rune emblazoned on the back, were the priestesses of Valaya. They roved in pairs, administering healing where they could and mercy where they could not. Morgrim thought it was the least he could do to help bury those beyond help. Though the ground was hard from the winter frost, despite the heat from the dwarf forges softening the earth, it was purifying work. There was rejuvenation in good, honest, toil, even though it was grave digging. To wield an axe for something other than bloodletting came surprisingly welcome to him.

A veritable sea of carnage stretched out in front of Morgrim. Acres of land were littered with broken shields; notched blades and spear tips; the sundered links of chainmail, rust red and still sticky; split pieces of elven scale, blackened by fire; shattered war helms with severed horns or their horsehair plumes aggressively parted; and the bodies of course, there were a great many bodies. One stood out above the others, which in itself was remarkable.

Despite the dead dwarf’s expression, Morgrim recognised him. It was the miner Snorri had spoken to before they had laid siege, Copperhand or Copperfinger. Copper something, anyway.

The poor bastard, like so many others, had given his life for hearth and hold. But unlike the remains of his kinsmen, this dwarf was unscathed. There were cuts and bruises, some of which were likely from digging, for he had the trappings of a tunneller. No killing blow that was obvious, though. It was his face that drew Morgrim to the dead dwarf’s side. Etched in such utter terror and disbelief. Fear had stopped the dwarf’s heart; he clutched his chest in rigor mortis as if it might have burst had he not.

‘Dreng tromm…’ breathed Morgrim, gripping a talisman that hung around his neck.

‘I’ve seen others who died with fear on their faces,’ said a female voice.

Morgrim turned, half-crouched by the deceased, and saw Elmendrin.

‘Tromm, rinnki.’ He bowed his head.

‘Always so respectful, Morgrim Bargrum,’ she said, returning the gesture. ‘What is it the warriors call you? Ironbeard? Grungni-heart would be more appropriate.’

Unused to flattery, Morgrim reddened. He gestured to the corpse.

‘You see something different in this one?’ he asked.

‘Yes, he is dead from fear itself. But it’s as though something just reached in and crushed the beating heart in his chest.’

‘My reckoning was not quite so exact, but this dwarf’s death is unique.’ He looked out over the killing field. Other grave diggers had joined him, together with the priestess. Morgrim even thought he saw Drogor. The dwarf from Karak Zorn was brushing soot from his shoulders, having doubtless had a near miss when the dragon had burned the attackers at the west wall. Not many survived that assault. Indeed, Morgrim was surrounded by some of its victims as a dozen eagle-eyed elven archers kept a bead on him from the ruined battlements not ten feet away.

‘He can’t be buried here,’ Morgrim decided, hoisting the dwarf onto his back.

Elmendrin helped him.

‘King Brynnoth’s tent is not that far,’ she said. ‘His grudgekeeper has been busy naming the dead all evening. Looks like a long night ahead of us.’

At the edge of the dwarf encampment, rites for the dead could be heard being intoned by the priests of Gazul. Morgrim had seen the solemn service many times before during battle, when tombs could not be built nor bodies returned to their holds. Instead, the dwarfs would bury them in the earth according to their clans. Shoulder to shoulder they would meet Grungni as warriors, the honourable dead. Barrows of earth would shroud them, dug by the surviving clans as Gazul’s priests uttered benedictions and incantations of warding. Every dwarf war caravan carried tombstones and these rune-etched slabs would be placed upon the mounds of earth where the fallen were buried. If the ground proved too hard to dig or the army fought on solid rock or tainted earth then the dead would be burned instead and their ashes brought back in stone pots for later interment. These too were carried by Gazul’s priests on sombre-looking black carts. So did the dwarfs attend to their dead, even when far from hearth and hold.

‘Does Snorri know you’re here?’ Morgrim asked, as they started walking. A dozen bowstrings creaked at the dwarfs’ departure.

Elmendrin looked down at the ground. ‘No. And it must stay that way.’

‘I doubt your presence will be a secret for long.’

‘Perhaps, but for now I want to do my work, fulfil my oaths to Valaya. Besides,’ she said, ‘Snorri has more important things to worry about than me.’

‘I think he would argue that.’

‘Which is precisely why I must go unnoticed by the prince.’ She allowed a brief pause, then looked up at Morgrim. ‘The war has changed him, hasn’t it?’

‘All of us are changed by it, and will continue to be.’

‘Not like that, I mean,’ said Elmendrin.

Morgrim regarded her curiously.

She answered, ‘It’s made him better, somehow. As if he was forged for it.’

There was a sadness in Morgrim’s eyes when he replied. ‘I think that perhaps he was, that all his petulance and discontent stemmed from a desire to fulfil that for which he was made.’

‘I thought so,’ said Elmendrin, moving off to help one of her sisters. ‘Do one thing for me, Morgrim Bargrum.’

‘Name it,’ he called out to her.

‘Try to stop Snorri from getting himself killed.’

He didn’t answer straight away, watching Elmendrin disappear back in to the mass of dead and dying. There were tears in his eyes when he did.

‘I will.’