‘Like the last days of King Lunn,’ said Belegar. ‘Traditional weapons, tried and tested – none of your new fangled gear. Iron and gromril and dwarfish muscle.’
‘Personally, I’d be glad of a flamecannon,’ said Duregar.
‘Aye,’ admitted Belegar. ‘So would I.’
Noise echoed up the corridors leading from the lower levels of the citadel.
‘Here they come! Dawi, to arms!’ shouted Belegar. His wound twinged as he climbed atop his oath stone and took his shield and hammer from his retainers. He tried not to wince.
Explosions rippled out, their distant rumbles carrying billows of dust into the hall. Worthless slave troops, sent to their deaths in the dwarfish traps. That was always the skaven way. Belegar wished that Queek would get on with it.
The battle was short by recent standards. Four waves of skaven came in and were thrown back, broken upon the unyielding steel of the shield walls. Poisoned wind globadiers scurried in the wake of the clanrats to be shot down by dwarf quarrellers with tense trigger fingers. This last time the skaven’s poisons choked their own. Ratling guns and warpfire thrower teams met the same fate, every one felled by pinpoint shots. The dwarf cannons fired until their barrels glowed.
But the dwarfs were few, and the skaven many. In ones and twos the final brave defenders of Karak Eight Peaks fell. The defensive ring around Belegar grew smaller and smaller. The skaven pressed their attack. The cannons fell silent. The number of dwarfs shrank steadily from two hundred, to a hundred, to fifty. The fewer they were, the harder they fought, no matter how tired they were, no matter how thirsty for ale. Each kinsman dragged down fired the dwarfs with righteous anger, driving every one on to acts of martial skill that would have been retold in the sagas and noted in books of remembrance, if only there were survivors to carry their stories away.
It was clear there would be none.
The latest skaven attack flowed back from the dwarfs, but there was no rest. A flood of red-armoured skaven bearing heavy halberds came streaming into the room.
‘Queek Headtaker’s personal guard,’ said Belegar. ‘He is coming.’
‘This is it, then,’ said Duregar, who stood side by side with his cousin still. ‘You and he will meet for the final time. Strike him down, Belegar. Send him back to whatever hell sired him.’
Belegar set his face and hefted his hammer. The crust on his wound opened again. Blood dampened his side under his armour.
The stormvermin of Queek’s Red Guard crashed into the remaining two-score dwarfs. The stormvermin were fresh and fired with vengeance. Long had the Iron Brotherhood been a ratbane. They hacked down the dwarfs, although the folk of the mountain gave good account of themselves. The last dozen dawi crowded round their lords, sending the Red Guard back time and again. Belegar and Duregar fought back to back, hammers crushing limbs and heads.
One by one the last of the dawi were dragged down, until only Belegar and Duregar remained. All round the kinsmen, skaven fell upon the fallen, tearing at dwarf flesh in their feeding frenzy, or wrenching trophies from the corpses. Duregar was attacked by six of the creatures at once and pulled down, his last words in that life a defiant war-shout to Grimnir.
‘Come on! Come on!’ bellowed Belegar. ‘Take me too, then, you miserable vermin!’ He brandished his hammer, sweeping it about him, but the skaven withdrew to a safe distance, imprisoning him in a circle of spearpoints. ‘Where is the Headtaker? I would show him my hammer!’ Belegar wept freely, tears of sorrow mingled with tears of anger.
The ring opened, and in stepped Queek.
‘Here I am, dwarf-thing. Eager-keen to die?’ he said in high-pitched Khazalid. This was too much for Belegar. To be confronted with this theft of the innermost mysteries of the Karaz Ankor at the very end was one insult too many.
‘Still your tongue! The language of our ancestors is not for you to profane! Bring your head here so that I may crack the secret of our speech from your skull. Attack me, Headtaker, and let us see how well you fare against a king!’ roared Belegar.
Queek hefted Dwarf Gouger and his sword. ‘Queek kill many kings, beard-thing. Your head joins theirs today, yes-yes.’ He tittered, then sprang into a spinning leap, the infamous Dwarf Gouger and sword whirling with deadly speed.
Belegar parried them with stolid economy. Queek curled over a hammer strike that would have flattened a troll and landed behind the king. Belegar faced him.
‘And I thought the Headtaker a master of combat,’ said Belegar quietly. All emotion save hatred and defiance had bled from his face. He stood on legs weakened by his wound and battle fatigue, but he stood nonetheless. ‘If you are the finest warrior your kind has to offer, no wonder you must resort to cheap tricks to bring your enemies low.’
Queek snarled and ran at Belegar. He punched forwards with the head of Dwarf Gouger, intending to make Belegar sidestep onto the point of his sword. But Belegar moved aside a fraction of an inch, evading the maul. He stamped down on Queek’s sword, though it moved almost too quickly to be seen, wrenching it from Queek’s grasp. A hammer blow of his own caught Queek by surprise. The skaven warlord moved aside awkwardly, holding only Dwarf Gouger. The hammer grazed him nonetheless, bruising his sword arm and driving his own armour into his flesh. Queek jumped back, swordless, blood matting his fur.
‘Pathetic,’ said Belegar. ‘Flea-ridden vermin, swift and twitchy. There’s not a dwarf alive who isn’t worth twenty of you.’
‘Queek has killed many hundred beard-things,’ said Queek. He shook his arm. Agonising pins and needles ran from his shoulder to his hand, jangling the nerves of his fingers. His shoulder was numb. ‘Queek kill one more very soon.’
‘Probably. I am tired, and I am beaten, and the memory of our last encounter festers still in my flesh. But even as you hack the head from my neck, Queek, you will know that you could never best me in more honourable circumstances.’
Few skaven gave a dropping for honour, but Queek was one of this unusual breed. His honour was not as a dwarf would see it, but it was there, built of arrogance though it was. Queek became enraged at this slur upon it.
The duel that followed was swift, its outcome inevitable, but Belegar was not done yet. Queek spun and ducked, casting a deadly net of steel about the dwarf with his terrible maul. Belegar smashed it aside several times with his shield, but with each swipe he became weaker. Queek hooked the king’s shield with the spike of his weapon, yanking it free from Belegar’s arm with a squeak of triumph. A following blow smashed into Belegar’s side, causing the king to cry out as his wound burst wider, but Queek overreached himself and the dwarf’s hammer hit his left side, rending apart his warpstone armour and cracking his ribs. Agonised, Queek staggered, only at the last turning his stumble into a spin that had him facing the long-fur again.
He and Belegar panted hard. Belegar bled freely from the wound Queek had given him in their last encounter. Blood pooled about his feet. He had other wounds, some small, others graver. He could not see it himself, but his face was ghostly white.
Queek smiled in spite of his pain. The end approached.
‘Greet-hail your ancestors when you meet them, beard-thing. Queek will come for them next. Death is no refuge from the mighty Queek!’
Again Queek charged, putting all his cunning into a complicated swipe reversed at the last moment to send Belegar’s hammer spinning away from him. Another blow took the dwarf king in the knee, shattering it, and sending the dwarf down. But to Queek’s amazement, the king arrested his fall. Holding himself in a kneel, his weight on his undamaged leg, he glared at the skaven, his eyes poison.