The Great Betrayal (6 page)

‘Choose your battlefield wisely.’

‘Our current situation would suggest we did not listen very well to that particular lesson, cousin.’

Snorri grunted as he killed another rat. Dwarfs were strong, especially those that descended from the bloodline of kings, but even the prince’s fortitude was waning.

‘We can’t fight a horde like this in the open,’ he said, swiping up a piece of broken wood with his off hand.

Morgrim was trying not to get his face bitten off when he said, ‘And you could not have thought of this
before
we were surrounded?’

‘Now is hardly time for recriminations, cousin. Do you have any more oil for that lantern?’ he asked, preventing any reply from Morgrim who didn’t bother to hide his exasperation.

‘A flask.’

‘Smash it.’

‘What?’

Each reply was bookended by grunts and squeaks, the swing and thud of metal.

‘Smash it, cousin. There.’ Snorri pointed. ‘Next to the stairway.’

‘What stairway? I can see no–’

‘Are you blind, cousin? There, to your left.’

Morgrim saw it, a set of stone steps leading further into darkness. The prospect was not an inviting one.

Snorri was still pointing with the piece of wood. ‘We can –
arrrggh!
’

Morgrim dared not turn, but the sound of his cousin’s pain made him desperately want to.

‘Snorri?!’

‘
Thagging
rat bit off my fingers… Throw the
chuffing
flask, Morgrim!’

It was risky to stow his hammer, but Morgrim did so to take the flask of oil from his belt and toss it. The heavy flask sloshed as it arced over the bobbing rat heads and smashed behind them in a scattering of oil and clay fragments.

Despite his wounding, Snorri still clutched the piece of wood in his maimed hand and thrust it into the dying embers of the lantern fire the dwarfs had rallied next to. Dried out from the many centuries down in the abandoned hall, it flared quickly, a spattering of spilled oil and the moth-eaten rag still attached to it adding to its flammability.

Snorri didn’t hesitate – his grip was already failing – and hurled the firebrand into the expanding pool of oil. It went up with a loud, incendiary
whoosh
, throwing back the rats clustered around it. Clutching their eyes, they squealed and recoiled, opening a path to the stairway.

Once he was sure his cousin was behind him, Morgrim was running. He didn’t bother to pull his hammer, and even threw his shield into the furred ranks of the rats to buy some precious time to flee. Snorri outstripped him for pace, his armour lighter and more finely crafted, and he reached the stairway ahead of Morgrim.

‘Down!’ shouted Snorri.

Still running, Morgrim replied, ‘What if the way isn’t clear?’

‘Then we’re both dead. Come on!’

The dwarfs plunged headlong down the stone steps, heedless of the way ahead, the way behind bracketed by flames. As swiftly as it had caught light, the lantern oil burned away and went from a bonfire to a flicker in moments.

The rats were quick to pursue.

Halfway down the stairs, which were broad and long, Snorri pointed with his maimed hand. Even in the semi-darkness, Morgrim could see he had lost one and a half fingers to the rat bite.

‘A door, cousin!’

It was wood, probably wutroth to have endured all the years intact and bereft of worm-rot. Iron-banded, studs in the metal that ran in thick strips down its length, it looked stout. Robust enough to hold back a swarm of giant rats, even rats that wore armour and carried blades.

Snorri slammed against it, grunting again; the door was as formidable as the dwarfs had hoped. Morgrim helped him push it open, on reluctant, grinding hinges.

The rats were but a few paces away when the dwarfs squeezed through the narrow gap they had made and shut the door from the other side.

‘Hold it!’ snapped Snorri, and Morgrim braced the door with his shoulder as the rats crashed against it. He could hear their scratching, the enraged squeals and the squeaks of annoyance that could not have been a language, for rats do not converse with one another. Frantic thudding from the other side of the door made him a little anxious, especially as he couldn’t see Snorri any more.

‘Cousin, if you’ve left me here to brace this door alone, I swear to Grimnir I’ll–’

Carrying a broad wooden brace, Snorri slammed it down onto the iron clasps on either side of the doorway.

‘You’ll what?’ he asked, catching his breath and wiping sweat from his glistening forehead.

Off to seek easier pickings elsewhere, the din from the rats was receding.

Snorri smiled in the face of his cousin’s thunderous expression.

After a few moments, Morgrim smiled too and the pair of them were laughing raucously, huge hearty belly laughs that carried far into the underdeep.

‘
Shhh!
We will rouse an army of grobi, cousin…’ Morgrim was wiping the tears from his eyes as his composure slowly returned.

‘Then we’ll fight them too! Ha! Aye, you’re probably right.’ Snorri sniggered, the last dregs of merriment leaving him. Wincing, he looked down at his hand and became abruptly sober. ‘Bloody vermin.’

‘I have never seen the like,’ Morgrim confessed. He pulled a kerchief from a pouch upon his belt.

Snorri frowned at it. ‘What’s that for, dabbing your nose when you get a bit of soot on it? Are you turning into an
ufdi
?’

Morgrim’s already ruddy cheeks reddened further. ‘’Tis a cloth,’ he protested, ‘for cleaning weapons.’

‘Of course it is,’ Snorri muttered as his cousin proceeded to wrap it around his bleeding hand. His smirk became a grimace as Morgrim tied the cloth a little tighter than necessary.

‘For now, it will suffice as a bandage,’ he said. He looked at the dark stain that was already blossoming red all over the kerchief. ‘It’s a savage bite.’

‘Aye,’ Snorri agreed ruefully, ‘I’ve half a mind go back in there and retrieve my fingers from its belly.’

‘Bet you would as well.’ Morgrim was exploring their surroundings, looking for a way onwards and preferably back to a part of the underway they knew. ‘That
would
be half-minded,’ he mumbled, attention divided. ‘Ha, ha!’ he laughed, turning to face his cousin. ‘Half a mind, to go with half a hand.’

Snorri scowled. ‘Very funny. Haven’t you found a way out of here yet?’

‘There’s a breeze…’ Morgrim sniffed, venturing forwards. Without the lantern, even with the sharp eyes of a dwarf, the darkness was blinding. ‘Coming from somewhere–’

Splintering rock, a loud
smack
of something heavy hitting stone and then a grunt arrested Morgrim’s reply.

It took Snorri a few moments to realise this
was
Morgrim and his cousin had fallen into some unseen crevasse.

‘Cousin, are you hurt?’ he called, only for the darkness to echo his words back at him. ‘Where are–’

Hard, unyielding stone rushed up to meet him as Snorri slipped on the same scree that had upended Morgrim. Daggers of hot pain pierced his back as he went down and he cracked his skull before the ground slid from under him and he fell.

Another thud of stone hitting flesh, this time his, like a battering ram against a postern gate. He felt it all the way up his spine and his left shoulder.

Groaning, Snorri rolled onto his right side and saw Morgrim looking back at him with the same grimace.

‘That bloody hurt,’ he said.

Morgrim eased onto his back, looked up at the gaping crevasse above. Dust motes and chunks of grit were spilling down from above like rain.

‘Must have fallen thirty, forty feet.’

He pushed himself up into a sitting position.

‘Feels like a hundred.’ Snorri was on his back, rubbing his swollen head.

‘Nothing to damage there,’ said Morgrim. He tapped the helmet he wore. A pair of horns spiralled from the temples and a studded guard sat snug against the dwarf’s bulbous nose. ‘Should wear one of these.’

‘Makes you bald,’ Snorri replied, prompting a worried look on his cousin’s face. A small stone struck Snorri’s brow and he grimaced again.

‘See,’ said Morgrim, getting to his feet and helping his cousin up. ‘Enough lying down.’ Once Snorri was vertical again, he brushed the dirt off his armour and checked he still had his hammer. ‘We need a way out.’

Without the lantern, it was hard to discern exactly where they had fallen. Doubtless it was one of the lower clan halls of Karak Krum, but there was precious little evidence of that visible in the shadows that clung to the place like fog.

Snorri sucked his teeth.

‘A pity you chucked our lantern oil.’

Morgrim bit his tongue to stop from swearing. Instead he looked around, sniffed at the air. ‘I smell soot,’ he said after a minute or so, then licked his lips. Another short pause. ‘Definitely soot.’

Snorri frowned, and went to recover his axe from where he’d dropped it when he fell. ‘All I can smell and taste is grit.’ He spat out a wad of dirt, hacking up a chunk of phlegm at the same time. ‘And rat,’ he added.

Morgrim’s face darkened. ‘No rat I have ever encountered spoke or carried a blade.’

‘That is because rats can’t do such things.’ Snorri tapped him on the forehead and made a face. ‘Perhaps you need a tougher war helm, cousin.’

Morgrim wasn’t about to be mollified. ‘I know what I saw and heard.’ His face grew stern, serious. ‘So do you. There is more than grobi and
urk
in these old tunnels. Who can say what beasts have risen in the dark beneath the world?’

Snorri had no answer to that. He hefted his axe and gestured roughly north. Even when lost, if a dwarf is underground his sense of direction is usually infallible.

‘Nose is telling me it’s that way.’

‘What is?’ asked Morgrim, though his cousin was already moving.

‘Something other than this thrice-cursed darkness.’ He paused. ‘And your talking bloody rats,’ he added, before stomping off.

Groaning under his breath, Morgrim followed.

CHAPTER TWO

Whispers in the Dark

Snorri and Morgrim
knew there was something in the Ungdrin Ankor, vermin maybe, but definitely an enemy the dwarfs had not faced before. Tales abounded, they always did, told by drunken treasure hunters. Few dwarfs, barring the credulous and the gullible, beardlings in the main, believed such tall stories. But myths made flesh were hard to refute. Morgrim was reminded again of the stories of his father, of the glowing rock unearthed by Karak Krum’s miners. He brought to mind the faces of the savage creatures they had just escaped and decided there was something alarmingly familiar about them.

The two dwarfs spent the next few minutes in silence, listening for any sign of the rats’ return.

After passing through a vast open cavern, its narrow stone bridge spanning a bottomless pit and its ceiling stretching into darkness, Morgrim asked, ‘How is your hand, cousin?’

Snorri kept it close to his chest, taking the axe one-handed as he walked. Blood stained the metal links of his armour where it had bled through the makeshift bandage. Regarding the wound, he sneered, ‘Think you need thicker pampering cloths.’

Morgrim ignored the gibe, reading the pain etched on his cousin’s face. ‘Looks in need of a redress.’

They had left behind the chasm chamber with its narrow, precipitous span and walked a long gallery with a high ceiling. Errant shafts of light cast grainy spears in the darkness from clutches of
brynduraz
. Such a rare mineral was worthy of mining and Morgrim had wondered then whether the clans of Karak Krum had left willingly – or moved at all. Long stalactites dripping with moisture that reflected the brightstone made the dwarfs duck occasionally, and a chill gave the air a bite.

‘Hurts like Helda just sat on it wearing full armour,’ Snorri complained, wincing as the ruddy cloth was re-tightened.

Morgrim laughed out loud.

Helda was one of many would-be consorts that Snorri’s father had attempted to
arrange
for the young prince. She was of good stock,
too
good in Snorri’s opinion given her impressive girth. A dwarf lord was said to be worthy to marry a
rinn
if his beard could wrap around her ample bosom at least once. Snorri doubted Helda would ever find a mate able to achieve that feat. If she did it would be a longbeard and past the age when siring an heir was amongst the dwarf’s concerns. In fact, one night Helda would likely test the poor sod.

Her father, the King of Karak Kadrin, was a strong ally of Karaz-a-Karak and had offered a sizeable dowry from his personal coffers to secure the union but Snorri had objected and then declined. Comely as she was, he had no desire to bed such a walrus and continue the Lunngrin bloodline. Besides, he had eyes for another.

‘She was a broad girl,’ admitted Morgrim, wiping tears from his eyes as he finished binding the wound anew.

‘As an alehouse, cousin.’

‘And a face like a troll.’

‘Trolls are prettier.’

Morgrim was holding on to his sides, which had begun to pain him, when he saw the light. It was faint, like a distant fire or a partly shuttered lantern.

And it was moving.

‘Hide!’ he hissed. Both dwarfs moved to the opposite edges of the gallery and hugged the walls.

Snorri gestured silently to his cousin, asking him what he had seen.

Morgrim nodded to the lambent glow in the distance. The reek of soot had grown stronger too.

Dawi?
Snorri mouthed.

Morgrim shook his head.

Not this deep
.

Karak Krum was a tomb in all but name. It only harboured creatures and revenants now. It fell to the dwarfs to find out which this one was.

The blade of Snorri’s axe caught in the light from the brightstone, signalling his intention.

Nodding slowly, Morgrim drew his hammer and followed his cousin as he crept along the opposite side of the gallery. All the while the patch of light bobbed and swayed, but never got any closer. Tales were often told to scare beardlings of cavern lamps or
uzkuzharr
, the ‘dead fires’ of dwarfs long passed who were slain in anger or because of misfortune. Such unquiet spirits did not dwell with the ancestors, nor did they eat at Grungni’s table, but were destined to walk the dwarf underworld. Jealous of the living, they would lure young or foolish dwarfs to their deaths, drawing them on with their light and their promises of gold. Often these dwarfs were found at the bottom of chasms or crushed to death under a rock fall.

Snorri and Morgrim knew the stories, they had been told them too during infancy, but now they were faced with such an apparition made real. The dwarfs kept it in their eye line at all times, using the eroded columns at the sides of the tunnel that held up the ceiling to hide behind. The tunnel led them to another room. It was small and had once possessed a door, which stood no longer. Only rusted hinges and wooden scraps clung to the frame.

It was a temple, obvious from the icon of Grungni carved into the wall, and had no other visible exits. A figure clad in a simple tunic, hose and chainmail was kneeling down inside. Old, if the bald pate and greying locks were anything to go by, he was muttering whilst casting rune stones onto the ground in front of him. A lantern was strapped to his back via some leather and metal contrivance and shone brightly without need of a flame. Its light gave him an unearthly lustre. Seen side on, he appeared to be conversing quietly with someone out of view.

Snorri mouthed,
Not alone
, and the two dwarfs crept closer until they could hear what the old dwarf was saying.

‘
Dreng tromak
,
uzkul un dum?
’ the old dwarf asked. ‘Are you sure? Nah, cannot be that.’ His low, sonorous tones made Snorri think of slowly tumbling rock.

‘
What?
’ Morgrim hissed, but Snorri pressed his finger to his mouth to silence him.

Casting the stones again, the old dwarf muttered,
‘
Dawi barazen ek dreng drakk, un riknu…
’ It was Khazalid, the language of the dwarfs, but archaic to the point where it was almost incomprehensible. ‘Not what I was expecting,’ he said, looking up at his companion, who was still obscured from sight. ‘Any ideas?’

Morgrim had reached the very edge of the temple and gestured to the old dwarf’s ‘companion’.

It was a stone statue of Grungni.

‘He’s mad,’ hissed Morgrim, frowning.

Snorri nodded.He recognised some of the old dwarf’s words, which now seemed prompted by their arrival.
Death
and
doom
, he knew. Also there was
destiny
and
king
.

Uzkuzharr lure their victims with promises, and their malice is as old as the earth
, the words of his mentors returned to him.

‘
Uzkul un dum
.’ The old dwarf nudged a rune stone with his knuckle, arranging it above another. ‘
Dreng drakk…
riknu…
’

The markings were ancient, wrought from chisel-tongue and hard to define.

Suddenly, the old dwarf turned, fixing them with a narrowed eye.

‘I see a dragon slayer in my presence,’ said the old dwarf, reverting to more common Khazalid. ‘One destined to become king.’ His eyes were slightly glazed, as if perhaps he was still unaware of their presence.

‘Ears like a bat!’ hissed Morgrim, hammer held ready.

Hackles rose on the back of Snorri’s neck. His tongue felt leaden, and he tasted sulphur. He hefted his axe in two hands, glad when his voice didn’t quaver. ‘Stand, creature. Make yourself known.’

In the glow of the lantern, the strange dwarf looked almost hewn from stone, no different to the statues of Karak Krum’s fallen king and queen. Snorri had heard Morek the runesmith speak in whispers of dwarfs that dabbled in magic, the wild unpredictable kind not bound to metal, of the slow petrification of their bodies and the cruelty it bred into their souls.

Not all dwarfs honoured the ancestors any more. Not since the Coming of Chaos in the elder days. Snorri knew his history, of legends about clans that fled the Worlds Edge Mountains to a land of everlasting fire and who swore fealty to a different god entirely, a father of darkness.

No dwarf in their right mind would venture this deep alone. Snorri and Morgrim were only there by misadventure, but the old dwarf had clearly come here deliberately. Perhaps he sought to profane the temple. Perhaps it was not a dwarf at all but some unquiet spirit of the lost dwarfs of Karak Krum.

Snorri’s skin felt suddenly cold and he suppressed a shiver. He edged forwards, caught a reassuring glance from Morgrim who was just behind him.

Axe at the ready, Snorri called out, ‘I said, rise and make yourself known. You are in the presence of the prince of Karaz-a-Karak.’

‘I see a great destiny,’ said the old dwarf, both cousins in his sight but looking right through them. ‘A king one day.’

Snorri partly lowered his axe without thinking. Another step brought him within a few short feet of the old dwarf.

His uttered a choked rasp.

‘
My
destiny? King?’ The desire in his eyes and his tone betrayed him.

‘One who will lift the great doom of our race, he who will slay the drakk…’ said the old dwarf, half lost in his prophetic reverie and, muttering the last part. ‘
Elgidum
…’

‘Drakk?’ Snorri’s axe went up again. ‘What drakk, old one? Is there a beast in these tunnels?’ He glanced around, nervously. Morgrim did the same.

‘I see nothing, cousin,’ he hissed, but was deathly pale and clutched his hammer tightly.

Anger burned away Snorri’s fear like fire banishes ice, and he returned to the old dwarf.

‘Who are you? Speak now or I will–’

‘You will what, brave prince?’ asked the old dwarf, regarding him properly for the first time, groaning in protest as he struggled to his feet in the light. ‘Kneeling is a young dwarf’s game,’ he mumbled under his breath. ‘Would you stab an unarmed dawi, then?’

Like a veil had lifted from his eyes, Snorri balked as he recognised Ranuld Silverthumb, Runelord of Karaz-a-Karak and part of the High King’s Council.

‘Lord Silverthumb, I…’ He kneeled, bowed his head.

So did Morgrim, who caught a flash of azure fire in the runelord’s eyes before he looked down.

Ranuld sighed wearily, ‘Arise, I have no desire to strain my neck and back further by looking down on you pair of
wazzocks
.’ He scowled at the two dwarfs who got up apologetically. ‘And sheathe your weapons,’ snapped the runelord. ‘Did you think me one of the
dawi zharr
, mayhap? Or an
uzkular
? Ha, ha, ha!’ Ranuld laughed loudly and derisively, muttering, ‘Wazzocks.’

Snorri flushed bright crimson and fought the urge to hide his face.

‘What was that prophecy you spoke of?’ he asked.

Lord Silverthumb grew angry, annoyed. ‘Not for ears the likes of yours!’ he snapped, and a shadow seemed to pass across his face. Snorri thought it looked like concern, but the runesmith was quick to recover and wagged a finger at them both.