Brunkaz buried his chin in his chest, considering his next words. ‘There are ogres in the pass, my lord,’ he said slowly.
‘There are always ogres in the pass,’ said Drakki dismissively.
‘More than usual, Drakki Throngton. Golgfag Maneater leads a great host of them,’ said Brunkaz, still not looking at his king.
‘The Maneater is in the Uzkul Kadrin?’ said Belegar, brightening. He reached his hand, richly gloved, up to his mouth, as if he would hide the smile spreading under his beard.
‘You can’t be thinking on hiring him, my king? Ungrim nearly killed him. He’s a thug, a pirate, a… a… mercenary,’ said Drakki, taking his turn to be outraged.
‘That’s exactly what he is,’ said Belegar. ‘A mighty one.’
‘I beg you, my king, recall Duregar from the East Gate,’ said Drakki.
‘What, and let Skarsnik have it? And how do we get out then, if it should come to that?’ The king shot Brunkaz a warning look not to take up his cause again. ‘The East Gate garrison stays where it is, for now. Golgfag is what we need. He’s fought many times for the dawi.’
‘And just as often against us. And he doesn’t come cheap,’ said Brunkaz.
‘You’d beggar the kingdom for an ogre’s sword?’ Drakki shook his head so vigorously that he dislodged his spectacles. He pushed them back into place with an ink-stained finger, and squinted expectantly at his king.
‘Better a beggared kingdom than a fallen one. I’ll promise him the pick of the treasury.’
‘There’s precious little in the treasury,’ grumbled Drakki.
‘He doesn’t know that, does he?’ said Belegar. ‘Get a messenger out to him.’
‘There’s a blizzard rising.’
‘Then no one will be able to see him, will they?’ said Belegar. ‘Do it now, Grungni scowl at you!’
Now both longbeards were taken aback by Belegar’s attitude. Belegar supposed he should feel guilty, snapping at these honoured elders like they were callow beardlings, but he didn’t. They knew his temper well enough.
The longbeards walked away from the table, chins wagging like fishwives. Belegar ignored the pointed looks they gave him. To keep others from approaching him, he affected an air of bristling bad temper. He didn’t have to try very hard. Those dwarfs waiting to petition him – priests, merchants, umgdawi and hill dwarfs – were discouraged, if not by his manner then by his hammerers, who ushered them out of the hall. He heard their complaints well enough; the hall wasn’t that big. Fair enough, some of them had been waiting a day or so, but he wasn’t in the mood to dispense the king’s justice. He feigned deafness and returned to his maps, staring hard at them until his eyes swam. As if that would be enough to turn the red and green parts of the map blue again.
If only it were so simple.
One dwarf, somehow, got through.
‘Perhaps now your majesty might consider our request?’
The smell of rancid pig fat and lime was unmistakeable. Belegar looked up from his maps into the magnificently crested face of Unfer, nominally the leader of the Cult of Grimnir in the hold. When the Slayers wanted something, it was Unfer who asked. Belegar assumed he must be their leader, but in truth he did not know. Their ways were closed and mysterious to all who had not taken the oath.
The king tried to look away, but was arrested by the Slayer’s eyes. Beautiful eyes, set into a face scarred by cuts and inner pain. They were out of place, clear blue as ice, and as devoid of emotion.
Belegar tugged at his beard and cleared his throat. He waved his hand over his maps.
‘I’m loath to let such fine warriors go out. I need every axe we have here.’
Unfer glanced at the maps like they were a carpet he had no interest in buying, and Belegar an overeager merchant. ‘That is not the nature of our oath, my lord. We have no desire to retreat until there is nowhere left to retreat to, to find our doom backed into some corner, or worse, to be taken alive. There is no hope in this defence. Let us go, and kill as many of them as we can for you. It is a service we gladly offer you.’
Unfer’s glacial gaze bored into Belegar’s eyes. The insult to the king’s ability as a general was implicit.
‘There is always hope,’ said Belegar. ‘Help might come yet.’ He heard the desperation in his own voice; he was afraid that the Slayer was right.
‘There is no hope left in all the Karaz Ankor. No one is coming. The Eternal Realm is finished. Best we all shave our heads and take the oath so that we might die with a song on our lips and our shame washed away in blood.’
‘Shame?’ said Belegar. Unfer shrugged shoulders craggy with muscle. Blue tattoos writhed over them. In hands like boulders, he carried paired rune axes – royal weapons. Belegar often wondered who he’d been. Unfer would never tell.
‘The shame of all our kind,’ said Unfer. ‘That we have failed to restore the glory of our ancestors. Better to fight. Better to wish for a good death than a ragged hope.’
Belegar was tempted. To sally out with his remaining few folk, and kill the thaggoraki until they themselves were killed. Let them taste dawi steel and remember them forever!
He blinked visions of a glorious end away. He could not. He was a king. He had responsibilities. He had a son, the first heir born to the king of Karak Eight Peaks since its fall two thousand years ago. He would not retreat. He would not abandon the legacy of his ancestors, so much dearer now it was the heritage of another.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We wait here. We will defend, and retreat, and defend. And we shall prevail.’
Disappointment flickered over Unfer’s face. ‘As you wish. It is your kingdom.’ The Slayer put one axe over each shoulder and turned away.
‘I have not finished,’ said Belegar sternly. ‘You have my permission to go,’ he added with understanding. ‘I cannot keep you from your oaths. What manner of king would I be if I did? I wish you would reconsider, but if you must, you have my leave. Fight well, and find the doom you deserve, Unfer.’
Unfer nodded once. ‘It is all any of us can hope for any more. Grimnir go with you, King Belegar. If we meet again, may it be in happier times for all dawi.’
‘You’ll not go yet,’ said Belegar. Unfer cast a weary look over his shoulder. The Slayer moved in the way those with deep depression do: slowly, as if through a treacle of despair. ‘I may be a poor king, but I’m still a king. You’ll get a proper send off. I’ll open my cellars to you, we’ll say the right words, drink to your deaths.’ He smiled awkwardly. ‘The old way.’
Unfer gave an appreciative bow. ‘Let no dawi say that King Belegar is ungenerous. It is good to hold to the old ways while we still can.’
‘Aye,’ said Belegar. ‘Aye, it is.’ He meant it as a good thing, but his troubled face said otherwise. All they had was the past, he thought, and even that was running away from them.
He didn’t notice Unfer leave. A commotion at the gates drew his tired eyes. One of the Iron Brotherhood, Skallguz the Short, was pushing his way through. He jogged up to his lord, red faced and out of breath.
‘My king!’ he said, and dropped to his knees.
‘What is it?’ said Belegar.
‘It is the queen, my lord. The prince…’ The dwarf stammered to a halt.
‘Spit it out!’ Belegar’s face went pale with terrible presentiment.
‘My lord,’ the dwarf said. ‘I don’t know how to say it… They’ve both gone!’
NINE
Kemma’s Way
Wind sang sadly through the teeth of the broken window, set in the dairy, high up in the side of Kvinn-wyr. A sheer drop of four thousand feet fell away down the mountain outside, ending in broad fans of scree covered by snow. Gromvarl pulled his head back in through mullions worn edgeless by the wind and rain, and leaned against a cracked milk trough. He shook the snow from his shaggy mane of hair and filled his pipe.