Neither could he have made up what happened next. Munch's blood seeped away into the plinth, and as it did the Clockwork King began to move again. Only this time, instead of sending out rams, its lower half reconstructed itself into the form of another throne on a circular platform. Except this throne was man-sized — more accurately, dwarf-sized. There was something else, too — it was surrounded by strange cylinder-shaped crystals.
"Oh, look," Slowhand said light-heartedly, though with tension in his voice. "He's built himself a chair."
Munch settled himself into it and the Clockwork King remade itself once more, smaller components from within assembling themselves into some kind of metal ring that moved forwards to encircle Munch's head. More spikes shot out of it and embedded themselves straight into his skull, and as they did the cylindrical crystals began to glow. Munch jolted and spasmed in the throne for a few seconds and then smiled. "Yes, Mister Slowhand, that hurt, too. But not, I am pleased to say, as much as my warriors are going to hurt you."
"Warriors?" Slowhand queried, dubiously.
"Not nice," Kali said. "I've seen them before…"
Munch closed his eyes and concentrated. A deep and rhythmic pounding suddenly reverberated throughout the throne room, and then from each of the spaces behind the statues figures marched before halting, more than one from each, and each of which thrice the size of a man. Standing there with their arms and heads slumped like those of ogur, they filled the galleries now and, like the interior of the Clockwork King itself, they were things of metal, of cogs and pulleys and gears, though they had been assembled in such a way that, like the king, they also superficially resembled dwarves, although grotesquely so. Each wielded a dwarven war hammer in one hand and a double-bladed axe in the other, but while the axe was of relatively normal size the hammer was as grotesquely enlarged as each warrior itself — a vicious-looking slab of iron-ribbed stone that was actually part of the ogur-like arm and would likely shatter walls, let alone bones, with a single blow. The only thing the warriors did not carry was a shield, but the giant hammer made such armour unnecessary, its bulk, used defensively, protection enough.
These were the things of which the manuscripts and all the tales had warned. Let slip once on Twilight, it had taken the combined technologies and sorceries of the elves and the dwarves to stop them. Let slip again, onto a Twilight where such abilities were as yet in their infancy, they would be formidable and unstoppable.
"By all the gods…" Katherine Makennon breathed.
"Don't you mean — ?"
"Slip of the tongue. What are these things?"
"They are M'Ar'Tak," Kali said. "Clan Trang's vengeance for the bloody carnage the elves reaped upon them. Isn't that right, Stan?"
Munch smiled on his throne. And then his face darkened. "History paints the dwarven races as the merciless ones, the warmongers, the roaring, blood-lusted, cold-blooded killers, but in our war with Family Ur'Raney it was they who proved to be merciless. Our war had raged for months, our forces driven back across the western territories we contested, the Ur'Raney seemingly able to summon endless reinforcements and our people falling before them — many to their blasted scythe-stones before they learned better. Before we knew it, our army was devastated, pushed back here, to the edge of the world. We thought they would stop, allow us to lick our wounds and leave, but they did not, instead driving us over the Dragonwing Cliffs, slaughtering us even as we fell, and forcing those who survived that slaughter into the sea. For the first time in the history of our race, dwarves were forced to hide, because there was nothing else they could do. They hid in the caves that permeate these cliffs like floprats because otherwise they — and Clan Trang — would have been exterminated."
"One of those who hid was Belatron, wasn't it?" Kali said. "He's what started all this?"
Munch nodded. "Belatron, our greatest wielder of magics. And within him a simmering hatred of the elves, a thirst for revenge that grew over the months — and then the years — into what you now see before you."
Slowhand spoke up. "You're saying that a small bunch of bloodied survivors burrowed into the sea and built an army of clockwork men to do their fighting for them. Apart from being a little unrealistic, that's not a very dwarven battle ethic, is it?"
"No, not to do their fighting for them," Munch said.
The archer gestured up at the warriors. "Then what do you call — "
"To do their own fighting," Kali said, cutting Slowhand off. "Because they're not clockwork men — at least, not wholly." She peered at the massed ranks and made out what the others had apparently yet not, that within the skeletal structure of each warrior were brains riveted into metal skulls, hearts suspended within metal ribs and, most grotesquely of all, eyeballs set deep within metal sockets. These things were not simply mechanical, they were vessels for the remains of warriors who had been slaughtered by the Ur'Raney.
And the most disturbing aspect about them was that, whatever mix of technology and dark magics had been used to create them, the organs remained fresh. Kali could tell that because each had a smaller version of the ring that encircled Munch's skull embedded in a still-pulsing brain.
"They called them the Thousand," Munch explained. "Dwarven warriors partly resurrected from where they had fallen to the elves and restored to fight again."
"Belatron harvested their bodies," Kali realised with disgust. "Returned to the battlefields and ripped their remains apart when they should have reached their final rest. That's why they called him Belatron the Butcher."
"They were warriors!" Munch exclaimed. "Each and every one of them would have given their right arm for the chance to fight for their clan once more!"
"Seems they did," Slowhand said. "Amongst other things."
Munch slammed his fist onto the side of his throne. "Clan Trang had to rise again! M'Ar'Tak had to march!"
"Wo-hoah. Steady, shorty."
"It all went wrong, though, didn't it, Stan?" Kali said. "This throne you're sitting in — this skullring you're wearing — is what Belatron used to control them. Only he couldn't, could he? Because by the time he'd done with them, by the time their brains had realised what they now were, and by the time he had forced them up those steps and indoctrinated them with his messages of death and killing and war, they had, all of them, become completely insane."
"They turned on their own," Makennon said. "And then they turned on everything else. A marching horde, but nothing to do with the Lord of All. How could I have been so blind, so stupid, so wrong?"
"You weren't wrong, Makennon," Slowhand said, looking at Kali. "Like Hooper, here, you just didn't have access to all the information. Something, in your case, I'm sure a certain short bastard had a lot to do with."
Makennon swung on Munch. "Why do you do this, Konstantin? Do you want to use your army to bring down the Final Faith?"
Munch laughed. "The Faith? The Faith is fleeting. My army is to be used to bring about a resurgence of the dwarven race, by giving them the freedom to emerge from their underground enclosures by annihilating anything that stands in their way."
"I've got some news for you," Slowhand said. "Your lot died out a long time ago. There are no more dwarven enclosures."
"Actually, there might be," Kali said, hesitantly.
"What?"
"Tale for another time."
"Oh."
Kali turned back to Munch. "Munch, listen to me. Belatron couldn't control these things, and neither will you. They won't wipe out anything that stands in your way, they'll wipe out everything, including yoursel — "
"Enough!" Munch barked. He inhaled deeply and his blood-stained brow furrowed with concentration. "It is time."