‘My king!’ Brok bowed. He ordered the Iron Brotherhood to come about face. The king marched with them, his wound concealed by his shield. He gritted his teeth against the pain and told no one of it.
The abomination reared over them, stinking of decayed meat and warpstone-laden chemicals. The weapons of half a dozen clans were embedded in its flabby sides, its underside slick and red with the blood of those it had crushed under its enormous weight.
Upon seeing their king and his guard arrive, the remaining miners fighting the creature took heart and shouted their war cries anew. Those without weapons took up whatever they could find to assail the creature.
‘The heads! Destroy the heads,’ ordered Belegar.
‘They’re high up for a killing stroke,’ said Brok.
‘Then let’s get its attention,’ said Belegar, ‘and make it bring them nearer our hammers.’
He strode forwards. Shouldering his shield, he swung the Ironhammer two-handed, smacking the thing hard on the rump. Waves rippled away from the impact. A second blow shattered a leg, a third a wheel grafted to its rear.
Finally recognising what it felt for pain, the abomination howled and reared up, dragging a pair of dwarf miners off their feet. They hung on to their picks for grim death as it lumbered around to face this new irritation.
‘Khazuk! Khazuk! Khazuk-ha!’ shouted Brok.
The hammerers advanced. Their numbers had been whittled down by a quarter in their earlier fight, and they had been battling for a good part of the morning without rest or refreshment. Lesser creatures would have been weary, and suffered for it. But these were dawi, many highborn, all warriors of the finest mettle. In their endurance they were indomitable, and they swung their hammers as if taking them up for the first time that day. Like triphammers in the forges of Zhufbar, the hammers of the Iron Brotherhood fell in a wave, pounding upon the skin of the horror, snapping bone and mashing flesh. The creature roared, swiping with one of its many arms. The first rank of hammerers were knocked down like pins in a game of skittles, but thanks to their armour few were hurt. The second rank stepped up to deliver another rippled blow. A grasping hand was shattered, a bloated paw burst. Brok Gandsson bellowed a challenge and ran at the side of the creature, pushing himself up the shattered machinery crudely grafted to its limbs. His feet bounced on its rubbery hide, but he kept his footing, ran to the top and cracked it hard over one of its nine heads. The neck attaching it to the sack of its body cracked, and the head sagged, dead. The abomination flung its upper portion to and fro, sending Gandsson flying.
Shouting mightily, the hammerers followed their champion, surrounding the creature and smashing at it furiously. The abomination thrashed, howling horribly. It killed but a few of the dwarfs, and its lower portion was soon so pulverised that its unnatural vitality could not heal all the tears in its flanks. Crying, it sank low, biting at its tormenters, allowing the hammerers access to its heads by doing so. These the dwarfs smashed to pulp one after another as soon as the snapping jaws came near.
Finally, the last head was split. With a tremendous shudder and a pitiful moan, the abomination breathed its last through pulverised lips and broken jaws.
The hammerers gave a ragged cheer.
‘Well done, Brok Gandsson,’ said Belegar, as the Iron Brotherhood helped their bruised but otherwise unhurt champion to his feet with many a clap on the back. ‘A deed worthy of the ancestors.’
Brok bowed his head. ‘My thanks, my king.’
‘Now blow the Golden Horn once more. It’s time we left this battlefield and retreated to the next defence.’ Belegar looked around sadly. To do so meant leaving the deeps completely in the hands of his enemies. From now on, they would be fighting for the citadel’s roots alone.
The war for the underhalls was lost, probably forever.
The horn blower lifted the sacred relic to his lips, but did not blow.
‘What…?’ said Belegar. All dawi eyes looked to the ground.
Through the ground came a rumbling sensation that built steadily until the floor itself vibrated. No dwarf could mistake it for an earthquake. The sensation was too regular, too localised for natural perturbation of the rock.
‘Tunnelling machines,’ gasped Brok.
‘Reform!’ bellowed Belegar. ‘Reform… ahh.’ He gasped, and clutched at his side. Red blood dripped upon the floor. His head swam. A strange, unholy heat radiated from his wound.
‘My lord,’ said Brok in dismay. ‘You are wounded!’
Belegar shouted back, annoyed at himself for betraying his injury. ‘It is nothing – a scratch. I gave the Headtaker more to remember me by than this, believe me. I commanded the army to reform. Look to them, not me. Be about it quickly, or all is lost!’
‘Yes, my lord.’ Brok relayed the order, and his orders were passed on by others. Dwarfs were efficient in all things, and very shortly horns sounded as the dwarfs called back their warriors from the pursuit.
A sound came from behind the Iron Brotherhood’s new square.
‘My king!’ shouted Brok.
Brok pointed at the abomination. Its skin shuddered. Three of its mouths worked. Bones cracked as jaws reset. Eyes grew bright. Flesh knitted together. It vomited freely from all of these mouths, and with a pained squeal, it jerked fully back into life and hauled itself up once more.
FIFTEEN
Enter Skarsnik
Queek’s scampering slowed. He looked to the ground and giggled. ‘Halt-stop!’ he called, holding up his hand-paw.
The Red Guard tittered, recognising the rumbling for what it was – the anticipated arrival of their reinforcements from the third clawpack. They formed up. Other units were slowing, their flight turning. For a moment they stood in a state of stilled disorganisation, before flowing back together, units consolidating almost magically from the chaotic mass of the rout. From the gateways into the hall more skaven issued. This was the remainder of the first clawpack, ordered to join battle by Queek only when the tunnelling machines made their presence known.
‘Hehehehe,’ snickered Queek. ‘Now we see who is the best, Belegar-king. See, loyal Ska, how the dwarf-things have broken their line in their foolishness. Too quickly they are to believe Queek would run-run! They have fallen for mighty Queek’s trap! They will all die-die, no matter how fast they stump-run to find their clawpacks again!’
Ska frowned. To his simple mind, it had looked like they were about to lose. Ska wasn’t particularly quick, but he was smart enough to know saying so would not be wise. ‘Yes, mighty Queek,’ he said instead.
The vibrations grew stronger, a bone-shaking grinding joining them. The entire hall rumbled. Just when it seemed they couldn’t possibly get any louder, the tone of the noise changed and piles of splintered rock mounded up in various places in the hall.
Queek leapt onto a boulder and brandished his weapons. ‘Be ready!’ shouted Queek, his voice barely carrying over the noise of the tunnelling machines. ‘Third clawpack arrives! Today, mighty Queek take long-fur’s head!’
‘Queek! Queek! Queek!’ squeaked his army.
The snout of a drilling machine appeared from one of the oversized molehills to the north, fifty yards short of the rapidly reforming dwarf army. The drill poked a few feet overground, then withdrew. With nothing to support it, the centre of the hillock collapsed, leaving a gaping hole in the ground.
Queek waited gleefully, his tongue searching out fresh scraps of dwarf flesh and blood in his fur.
Green light issued from the hole. Smoke poured after it. Other machines were poking up out of the floor and walls, and retracting, leaving fresh tunnel mouths behind them. One by one they fell silent and the tremors dwindled.