‘Mother!’ he shouted with undwarf-like emotion. The others looked away at the boy-king’s unseemly display. They embraced. Someone tutted.
‘I thought you were dead.’
‘I too,’ said Kemma. She looked him deep in the eyes. His return look said he knew it too, that soon they would be.
‘Where are your Valkyrinn?’ said Kemma to Magda, looking about for the priestess’s bodyguards.
‘Gone. Gone to fight, and now doubtless dead.’
‘The king is dead?’ she asked, although she knew the answer.
‘Fallen. We are the last few dawi of Karak Eight Peaks. Thorgrim is our lord now.’
‘Whatever you say, mistress Magda,’ said Thorgim.
Magda chuckled. ‘You’re the king! You don’t have to defer to me.’
‘I think I will,’ said Thorgrim gracefully. ‘If it’s all the same to you.’
The last few dwarfs were running down the hall towards the room, heavy boots banging sparks from once fine mosaics. Worryingly, this included the last few warriors. Bloodcurdling screams and a horrible squeaking pursued them.
‘We better get in, and quickly,’ said Magda. She produced from under her robes a heavy object wrapped in oilcloth and offered it to the queen. ‘You’ll be wanting this.’
‘My hammer?’ guessed Kemma.
‘Of course. No queen should stand her last without her weapon. Are we dawi, or are we umgi females to go screaming into the night?’
Kemma nodded and took the oilcloth from the priestess; there indeed was the hammer.
‘Thank you.’
‘I took it from the armoury. I had no doubt you would need it at the end. Valaya provides for her champions.’ She gave a weary sigh, and steadied herself on Kemma’s shoulder. ‘I fear she has one final task for you before the end.’
Freya beckoned her through the door. The few dwarf warriors outside nodded their heads grimly and slammed it shut. A key turned in the lock from outside, and those inside barred the door as best they could, nailing planks across the door and frame that had been left there for that purpose.
What a last stand. Here were the young and infirm, the very, very old. Those beardlings old enough to fight or who flat out refused to leave, those young unkhazali who were too young to chance the journey. Their parents’ choice, not theirs. Kemma wished Belegar had ordered them all to go.
A room mostly full of those who never would or could no longer swing an axe. But all of those strong enough to lift them held one. Cooks, merchants, beardlings and rinn. All dwarfs had warrior in them, but some were more warlike than others, and the dwarfs in that room were among the least. They were down to the very last. She and Thorgrim were the champions of the room, the last heroes of this failing land.
She looked out of the room’s small window. Snow swirled around the tower, but it could not obscure the hordes of greenskins camped outside, insolently within gunshot of the walls. It made her sick to see them. Within hours, she reckoned, they would be fighting with the skaven over her bones.
The door shook. The beardlings tried their best to be brave, the younger children were openly terrified, the unkhazali cried in their mothers’ arms. There were not many children there; Karak Eight Peaks had never been a kind environment to raise beardlings. And here they all were, Karak Eight Peaks’s hopes for the future, trapped like rats and waiting to die.
The warriors in the corridor called out their battle-cries. From beyond the door a clashing of blades and the squealing of dying skaven set up. Thorgrim looked to his mother.
‘Don’t hold your axe so tightly,’ she scolded gently. ‘It will jar from your hand, and then where will you be?’
‘Sorry, mother,’ said Thorgrim.
Kemma smiled at him sadly. ‘Don’t be sorry. You have never done a wrong to dawi or umgi or anyone or anything else.’ She reached up to pat his face as she always had, a mother’s gesture for her child. But, she realised, he was not a child any more, despite his years. He was a king. She grasped his arm instead, a safe warrior’s gesture. ‘You would have been a very great king, my boy.’
The sound of arms abruptly ceased. There was a thump on the wood and a dying gurgle. Blood pooled under the door. Queekish squeaked outside. Silence. Then the door began to shake.
The door bounced in its frame. The wood splintered. The nails in the planks worked loose, and the first of them clattered to the floor.
‘They’re coming!’ screamed Kemma. ‘They’re coming!’
The fight was short and bloody. Kemma barred the way, keeping her son behind her, but he was singled out, and he was among the first to die. Kemma held back her grief and fought them as long as she could, a succession of untried warriors taking the position at her side. The skaven were stormvermin, strong and cunning warriors, but she was a queen, her hammer driven by a mother’s grief. They stood no chance. Ten she slew, then twenty. Time blurred along with her tear-streaked vision.
Kemma felt relief when the poisoned wind globe sailed into the room over the stormvermins’ heads, and shattered on the stone walls behind her. The choking gas poured with supernatural alacrity to fill every corner. The skaven in front of her died, white sputum bubbled at its lips, eyes bulging. Kemma held her breath, though her head spun and eyes stung and blurred. She ran forwards, hoping to buy time enough for the dwarfish young to die. Better a quick death by gas than the lingering torment of enslavement that would await them should they be taken alive.
‘Dreng! Dreng thaggoraki! Dreng! Dreng! Dreng!’ she shouted, swinging her hammer wildly. Her lungs burned, she could feel them filling with fluid. She was drowning in her own blood. Still she fought, sending the skaven breaching party reeling. Behind her, the cries and coughs subsided. Good, she thought. Good.
‘Za Vala-Azrilungol!’ she cried, holding her runic hammer aloft. The runes on it were losing their gleam, the magic leaching away, becoming nought but cut marks in steel. ‘Khazuk-ha! Vala-Azrilungol-ha! Valaya! Valaya! Valaya!’ She swung her hammer for one final swing, bloodying a stormvermin’s muzzle, but she was dying, her strength fleeing her body, and they brought her down. They pinned her to the floor, and she spat bloody mouthfuls at them. She panted shallowly, but could draw no sustenance from the air. The world and all its cruelties and disappointments receded. A golden light shone behind her as the halls of her ancestors opened their doors. Before she passed through, she flung one last, panting curse at her murderers.
‘Enjoy your victory. I hope you live to regret it.’
The column of greenskins toiled up the slopes of the mountains, into the bitter chill of the unnatural winter. They were led by a toothless, wrinkled old orc clad in nothing but a pair of filthy trousers and a stunty-skin cloak with the face still attached. The head of the stunty sat on the orc’s scalp, moustaches hanging either side of the orc’s face, beard tied under his chin. Consequently the dangling arm and leg skin of the dead dwarf only came halfway down the orc’s back. He had on no shoes, no shirt, no nothing, and it was freezing cold.
‘This way, this way!’ said Zargakk the Mad, for that was who the orc was. ‘No it ain’t!’ he scolded himself. ‘Oh yes it is!’ he replied.
‘Just where have you been these last years, Zargakk?’ said Skarsnik. ‘Funny you just turning up this morning like that. We could’ve used you in da fight.’
‘Yep, yep,’ yipped Zargakk. ‘Could have, could have. But I’s been busy. Yep, very busy. Part of it I was, er, dead. Yeah. I forget, um, the rest. But you got me Idol of Gork, dincha? That was a help! And I’m here now. Whoop!’ His eyes blazed green. Smoke puffed from his ears. Duffskul had been nutty, but Zargakk was totally crazy.