‘That’s the signal! Here they come, lads!’ cried Borrik Norrgrimsson. His ironbreakers, Norrgrimlings all, held their shields up and locked them together, awaiting the arrival of the ratmen.
‘It’s about time the thaggoraki got here,’ growled Hafnir Hafnirsson, Borrik’s second cousin. ‘I’m eager to split a few heads.’
‘We’ve been standing in this hall for two months waiting for this lot. I’m sure we can hang on for a few more minutes,’ said the Norrgrimlings’ notoriously miserable Ironbeard, Gromley. ‘Now shut up, or you’ll put the thane off. He’s on to something.’
Borrik kept a careful eye on all three entrances to the Hall of Reckoning. Two dwarf-made stairwells leading down into the enemy-infested second deep, and a massive pit, gnawed by some unspeakable thing, gaped in the middle of the floor. Not goblin work, or Borrik was an umgi. Other places gave him cause for concern. He had a keen eye for tunnelling, Borrik, and had spent a goodly amount of time tapping at the walls with variously sized hammers. There were more tunnels behind the walls, some of them worryingly new. And if there was one thing ‘new’ meant to dwarfs, it was trouble.
When Belegar assigned him to the hall, he had examined every inch thoroughly. Four hundred and one half-dwarf paces long, part of a broad thoroughfare that once ran east-west through the first deep to join with the Ungdrin Ankor. Blocked at both ends by rock falls, it would have been of little concern, save one thing. The fall at Borrik’s end was pierced by a narrow gap, shored up by a failed expedition many centuries ago. At the other end, in a chamber hacked out of the loose rubble, was a steel-bound door that led into another passageway. This in turn led to the lower parts of the citadel. The door of Bar-Undak was its name, a messenger’s access way to the Ungdrin in happier days. Now, in Borrik’s seasoned opinion, a bloody liability. Belegar had been determined to keep the hall open, it being one of the more easily defensible ways into the deeps. So it stayed open, as did thirty-nine other ways, thought Borrik grimly. Thirty-nine. Sometimes the king was a real wazzok.
In this tunnel, the Axes of Norr were arranged, two dozen in all, their front rank of ten flush with the low entrance. Seven irondrakes – the Forgefuries – were ranged in front of them.
‘If Belegar has one fault, it’s optimism,’ he grumbled to his banner bearer, Grunnir Stonemaster.
‘Aye,’ said Grunnir, his eyes fixed like Borrik’s on the arched stairwells leading into the hall. ‘Like you, my lord, I find anything other than healthy cynicism in a dwarf entirely unnatural. But I’ll say this, what other trait would lead a dwarf to try to retake Karak Eight Peaks? There’s a lot to be said for bloody-mindedness. I thought you of all people could respect that.’
‘If it had been down to me, I would have blocked off this tunnel long since. As I’ve said to the king a dozen times…’
Grunnir rolled his eyes. He’d heard this opinion a lot recently. Borrik wasn’t one to let a point lie.
‘…ever since Skarsnik’s grobi got pushed out of the upper levels two years gone–’
‘It’s been obvious the thaggoraki are planning something,’ said Grunnir, finishing his thane’s words for him, so often had he heard them before. ‘You’re not the king, Borrik. And you and me and all the rest of us followed him here, didn’t we, you grumbaki?’
‘So? I’ve every right to grumble.’
‘As has every dwarf with a beard as long as yours, cousin. My point is that we all share Belegar’s fault – if it is a fault – in being here at all. So it’s not really his fault, is it?’
Borrik sniffed. There was no arguing with that. He was quiet a moment. ‘I’d still have sealed this tunnel off, mind.’
‘Oh, give it a rest, would you?’ said Grunnir. Borrik raised his eyebrows. ‘Thane,’ added Grunnir.
‘That’s better,’ said Borrik.
There was so much history around them. Ancestor faces at the top of the stairways told of Vala-Azrilungol’s glory days. The rock falls recalled its weakening and downfall, the marks of the mason who had chiselled out the tunnel they now defended harked back to one of the many doomed attempts to reclaim it, while the gaping, tooth-gnawed pit before them told them all who Karak Eight Peaks’s real masters were now.
A hideous chittering echoed up out of the dark.
‘Right, that’s it, here they come,’ said Borrik. ‘Ready, lads!’
A musty draught blew up from the tunnels.
‘By Grimnir’s axe, there must be a lot of them,’ said Grunnir, flapping his hand in front of his face. ‘I can smell them from here!’
Hafnir grinned. ‘There’s always a lot of them, but it doesn’t matter how many, because we’re here. One hundred or a million of them, they’ll not get past!’
‘Aye!’ shouted the lads.
Stone-deadened explosions sounded down the stairs, sending a brief, fiercer breeze washing over the dwarfs that smelt of gun smoke, sundered rock and blood.
‘That’ll be the traps, then,’ said Hafnir. Grim chuckles echoed from gromril helms.
More explosions sounded, closer now. Any other attacking army might have been discouraged, but the skaven were numberless and were never put off. Borrik hoped they’d killed a lot anyway.
The first skaven spilled into the room, eyes wild with fear. They were scrawny, badly armed if at all, mouths foaming. They saw the dwarfs in their corner. The front rank hesitated but were pushed on, those attempting to go against the tide falling under the paws of their fellows.
‘Typical,’ said Borrik, indicating the rusted manacles and trailing chains of the lead skaven with a nod of his head. ‘Slave rats. They’re going to try and wear us down.’
‘Don’t they always?’ said Grunnir.
‘Just once, it’d be nice to go straight to the main course,’ moaned Gromley.
‘In your own time, lads,’ said Borrik, nodding at Tordrek Firespite, the Norrgrimlings’ Ironwarden leader. The Forgefuries levelled their weapons. The skaven scurried forwards, forced on by the mass of ratkin boiling up out of the depths. The far side of the chamber was a mass of mangy fur, crazed eyes, twitching noses and yellow chisel teeth.
‘Fire!’ said Tordrek.
Thick blasts of searing energy shot out of the Forgefuries’ guns, punching through skaven and sending them sprawling back into the mob. The fallen disappeared under their scurrying colleagues. Many fell into the hole in the centre, forced over the edge by the surging press; others stumbled and were crushed underfoot.
‘Fire!’ cried Tordrek again. Once more the irondrakes spoke, misting the air with gunsmoke.
‘Fire!’ he said one more time. The entire front rank of the skaven horde had been smashed, but thousands more came on behind them.
‘That’s close enough. Part ranks!’ shouted Borrik. The dwarf ironbreaker’s formation opened up like a clockwork automaton, allowing the Forgefuries to slip through to the back. They went unhurriedly into the small chamber around the door of Bar-Undak, as if there weren’t a numberless pack of crazed thaggoraki snapping at their heels.
‘Close ranks!’ bellowed Borrik. The gromril-clad dwarfs slid back together, presenting their shields as the first skaven hit home.
The skavenslaves were slight creatures, no bigger than grobi and less heavily built. The wave of them crashed feebly upon the shield wall. Rusty blades and rotten spears broke on impenetrable gromril. More and more skaven piled in from behind, pinning the arms of the foremost, crushing the air out of their lungs. The dwarfs stolidly pushed back, unmoved by the immense pressure. The skaven trapped at the front snapped at the dwarfs, shattering their teeth on armour. The dwarfs responded by swinging their axes, chopping the foe down with every swing. They could not miss. Behind the shield wall it was surprisingly peaceful, as if the dwarfs waited out a storm battering the windows of a comfortable tavern.