If he were truthful, he was lucky to have won at all.
The torches in Queek’s chamber flickered. In the corner he had a pile of looted glimstones, their cold light forever constant, but these too stuttered. The presence of his dead-thing trophies, always tentative of late, receded entirely. A shadow gathered. It would be behind Queek. It always was. He did not give Lurklox the pleasure of turning to greet him.
‘Little warlord preening, good-good. Sleekness is stealthiness,’ said the verminlord’s voice, as Queek had predicted, from behind him.
Even blinded, the thralls felt the powerful presence and scurried to get out. The shadow grew around Queek, making everything black. Queek alone remained illuminated, alone in the dark.
Lurklox stepped through into the bounds of this world, gracefully uncoiling himself from nothing into something. Although he had seen it many times now, Queek was unnerved by the way the towering verminlord stepped out from the shadow.
Queek did not care for the way Lurklox spoke to him, nor did he like the way his fur stood on end in the rat-daemon’s presence.
‘What have you found out?’ demanded Queek.
‘Impudence, haste-haste. Always the same. Either too much greeting, or none at all. The warlord clans never change.’
Sensing that Queek had steeled himself against such provocations, the verminlord got to the point.
‘The grey seer needs you as an ally. Your Lord of Decay Gnawdwell moves to ally with Clan Skryre. It is he that makes the attempts upon your life. It was he that bid-told Thaxx to delay. It was he that called upon Ikit Claw to shame you. You are being used, Headtaker. Gnawdwell grooms many replacements for you.’
Queek burst into laughter. Lurklox’s anger grew thick, a palpable, dangerous thing, but Queek did not care. ‘Great and stealthy Lurklox talk as if this not known to Queek!’ He dissolved again into giggles. ‘None of this news to Queek. Every lord tests his lieutenants. So what? Most die, some live to be tested tomorrow. And Queek has lived to see many tomorrows! Gnawdwell will not be disappointed by Queek disappointing him.’
Lurklox loomed, growing bigger. Queek stared defiantly up at the shadowy patch he judged the verminlord’s face to occupy.
‘Then what of Gnawdwell’s prize, long life and forever battle?’ said Lurklox, and Queek’s blood ran cold. ‘Does it still stand, or was Gnawdwell only lying to Queek? Queek is a fool-thing, mad-thing. Queek does not know everything, but I do.’
Lurklox let his words hang, making sure he had asserted dominance over the warlord before continuing. Queek wanted to know if the offer was real; Lurklox could taste his incipient fear at his growing age. Good. Let him be afraid.
‘Time runs on,’ said Lurklox, hammering the sentiment home. ‘Time Queek no longer has. I have come from council with Skarsnik. I have struck a deal with the goblin-thing for you. The war here will soon be over. Queek is needed elsewhere.’
The shock on Queek’s face was a further reward for the verminlord.
‘Yes-yes!’ said Lurklox, encouraged. ‘Deliver the dwarf-king’s head by sunset tomorrow and Skarsnik will leave the City of Pillars.’
Queek snorted and licked at a patch of fur his slaves had missed. ‘What else did you give-promise Skarsnik? Queek’s lieutenants make uncountable bargains with the goblin king, and he breaks every single one. What make Lurklox think this time will be any different?’
‘Queek guesses well. Clever warlord. There was something else. The promise of that head… and something Ikit Claw does not yet know is missing. A threat-gift. If the imp-thing not take, then we use it against him.’
‘Why not use this thing-thing against him in first place, mysterious Lurklox? Simple way best. Skaven too stupid to see.’
Lurklox did not answer.
‘Very well,’ said Queek. ‘I will slay the beard-thing and hand over his head to the imp. Queek has-owns many dwarf-thing trophies already. What does Queek want one more for?’
On rickety shelves, nearly two dozen trophy heads looked at him with empty eyes.
Queek refrained from explaining to Lurklox just how tricksy the goblin was. It would give him a great deal of amusement to see the verminlord upstaged by the imp. There was no way that the so-called king would give up the kingdom he had been fighting over for his entire life. And when he broke his deal, Queek would kill him and take back Belegar’s head and Skarsnik’s into the bargain. Queek tittered.
‘A great-good deal, clever high one, most impressive.’
TWENTY-ONE
The Final Saga of Clan Angrund
In an out-of-the-way cellar of the citadel, Gromvarl stood in a pit in the floor and tugged at an iron ring set into a flagstone. Unprepossessing, lacking the adornment of most dwarf creations, a slab of rock hiding a secret. There was a finality to it.
‘Someone give me a hand here!’ grumbled the longbeard. ‘It’s stuck.’
‘It’s the differentiation in air pressure – sometimes does that, sucks it closed. It’s murder to get open,’ said Garvik, one of Duregar’s personal retainers. ‘Come here. Ho ho, Frediar! Hand me a lever.’
Garvik’s nonchalant manner turned to swearing. Soon there were four of them in there, arguing over the best way to prise the door open. Finally, after much effort, it budged. Air whistled around the broken seal. They tugged hard, and a fierce draught set up, building to a shrieking wind that settled into an eerie moan once the stone had been set aside.
Gromvarl looked down the narrow shaft the trapdoor covered: big enough for a dwarf, no more. He held his lamp over it. Red iron rungs stretched down into the blackness. The shaft descended thousands of feet. That it had not been uncovered by the thaggoraki or the grobi was a wonder. Only weeks ago, a handful of rangers had set out from this place to guard the refugees fleeing the sack of Karak Azul. There had been hopeful talk of their numbers swelling those of the dwarfs of Karak Eight Peaks, but Karak Eight Peaks had become a place of wild hopes. None of the dwarfs of Ironpeak had ever arrived, and the warriors sent out to help them were lost.
A double-or-nothing gamble for the king, and the dice had come up poorly once more. The dice these days were always loaded. Douric could have told him that. The king rolled now in desperation, a dawi down to his last coin.
‘Gromvarl! Get yourself out of there. The king’s coming.’
Gromvarl disdainfully allowed himself to be helped up out of the pit, like he was doing those who helped him a favour, and not the reverse. Truth was, he was not so spry any more, but he hid it under a barrage of complaints.
Once out, he stood among a group of fifty dawi gathered in the cellar, three dozen of them dressed for hard travelling, all armed. The room was crowded, the damp air fogged by their breath and the heat of their bodies. Longer than it was broad, with a tapering roof of close-fit stone, the cellar was flawless work, but all unembellished as the escape door. No such place of shame should be decorated. No carven ancestor face should look upon the backs of dwarfs as they fled. That was the reasoning. A shame that ordinarily ale barrels and cabbage boxes hid.
Several of those present were proper warriors, rangers and ironbreakers. They stared at the floor, humiliated beyond tolerance by the king ordering them to leave. They understood that what they had to do was important, all right, but Gromvarl would bet his last pouch of tobacco – and he was down to the very last – that every one of them wished some other dawi had been selected and told to go in his place. They chewed their lips and moustache ends and fulminated. Gromvarl could see at least three potential Slayers among their number.