Thorgrim, usually so stern, was wide-eyed. ‘It is the greatest honour I have enjoyed in a long time, Master Brewer.’
‘Isn’t it just?’ said Bugman. He looked the king dead in the eye. For all his power and honourable ancestry, Thorgrim felt the battered ranger, born from the dwarf exodus, little better than city-dwelling umgdawi, to be far more than an equal to him. ‘When my old dad’s brewery burned to the ground, and my folk were all killed, I thought it was the end of the world.’ He sighed, a spill of smoke twisting its way from his mouth. ‘And it was the end of one. Another began. I am still here. Don’t scratch out the dawi yet, High King. There’s fight in us all still.’
Bugman hung his magic pint pot, now mysteriously empty again, from his belt. He stood up and offered his hand to the king, like they were two merchants in a bar and not a dispossessed brewer and the lord of all dwarfs. Thorgrim shook it.
‘I’ll be away now.’ He looked into the night, broken only by the dwarfs’ lamps and torches and the light streaming from the high windows of the forts. ‘There are other dwarfs out there as need me.’
‘Still?’ said Thorgrim.
Bugman smiled down at the king. ‘Aye, and there always will be. Whatever happens next, king of kings, don’t ever forget that. We’ve lost a lot, that’s for sure, but there’s no use crying over spilt ale. As long as the mountains are made of stone, there’ll be dwarfs in them, of that I’ve no doubt.’
Bugman lifted up his head, and let out a long trilling whistle. The call of the high mountain chough, not heard for years in those parts. It brought a tear to the king’s eye.
Dark, solid shapes moved from out of the rocks. Thorgrim rubbed his eyes. He felt quite drunk. Bugman, seconds ago alone, was surrounded by his warriors.
‘Look after those of my lads that fell here, king.’
Thorgrim nodded. Bugman winked and vanished into the dark.
Blearily Thorgrim got into his throne. From the vantage it offered, he looked about, but Bugman was nowhere to be seen. He suddenly felt very tired.
‘I shall rest a moment,’ he said. ‘Just a moment.’ He sat down, closed his eyes, and drifted off to the sound of dwarfs hard at work repairing the damage others had done.
Thanquol was nauseous. No matter how he held himself, he felt like he was about to fall over. The walls of the tower – he assumed it was a tower, but who knew if it was or if it was not – did not look right. He felt like he was standing at an angle even when he was quite straight. Wherever Lord Verminking had brought him was not of his world.
‘Now we show you, as promised,’ said the verminlord.
‘What should I see?’ asked Thanquol. He stared into the swirling scrye-orb Verminking produced out of nowhere.
‘Doom, yes-yes. Doom which will lead to your ascension,’ said Skitzlegion.
This did not exactly answer Thanquol. He had no idea how the swirling clouds within the orb amounted to doom, and how was he going to ascend? The grey seer was about to question the verminlord further when the mists of the globe coalesced into faintly glowing images. He was watching a dwarf-thing.
‘The king of all dwarfs!’ he whispered. ‘How do you do-accomplish this? Dwarf scratch-magic makes see-scrying impossible.’
‘Not to us,’ said Verminking, tittering. ‘We know things you shall never know. Concentrate. Think yourself inside his head. You will know all. You will know his thoughts, his heart, his mind. Breath-breath! Yes, yes, that is right. In, we skaven can steal into anything, why not another’s soul? Listen to me, Thanquol, and you learn much, plenty-good magic…’
Thanquol’s vision swam. And then he wasn’t there any more.
Thorgrim Grudgebearer looked up the first curl of the spiral Stair of Remembrance. The walk to the King’s High Porch atop Karaz-a-Karak was always an arduous climb, but right then the stairs were as daunting as a steep mountain slope. He was bone tired. He’d woken a few hours before dawn to find himself exhausted. A clean tiredness, that of the purged, but heavy upon him. He suspected his whole body ached, but could only feel the renewed throb of his wound. Bugman had been right, though. The returned pain was less than it had been before he drank from the fabled tankard. He supposed he should rest more, and he would, but this had to be done first. With his jaw set in determination, the High King began the journey up the spiral stair. Although he longed for sleep, this personal ritual, a way to both commemorate the fallen and ultimately to clear his head, had to be performed.
Despite his victory, his mind was awhirl. Ungrim – grown stranger than ever – had given the High King much to muse over, but that would have to wait. And Bugman, with his never-empty cup and unquenchable hope. Could it be the dwarfs would persist? Now the ale glow was gone, Thorgrim was not so sure, and his oaths to retake their ancient realm seemed laughable.
The stairs demanded his attention, and he turned it upon them. Up and up he wound, each step bringing him pain.
No one but the High King might use these stairs. The lookout at the top and its King’s View was his privilege alone. It was High King Alriksson, Thorgrim’s predecessor, who had shown Thorgrim the way, and even then he had not been permitted to look out, not until Alriksson was dead, and he had made the journey alone.
With each clumping step, Thorgrim remembered one of the slain from the day’s battle. He recalled each dwarf, his name and clan. The journey took hours, yet Thorgrim always ran out of stairs before he ran out of names. The rest of the fallen must await his return trip.
Towards the top, the air grew very thin, and Thorgrim’s lungs laboured hard, aggravating the pain in his side. Dwarf blood was thick, but the air was too sparse here even for them. His progress slowed. The last quarter took longer than the rest. He saved the names of the greatest of warriors for this difficult part of the climb.
At last he reached the top, a high dome carved right inside the very tip of the mountain, adorned with carvings unseen by any other eyes and lit with a king’s ransom of ancient runic glimlights. The sight always awed him slightly, a reminder of the power and glory of the old dwarf kingdom. Coming here was like ascending into the heavens themselves.
Outside, there were no longer any stars. Thorgrim pushed open the rune-heavy door to the porch. The stone slid outwards soundlessly.
Wind whistled around the edges. The air this high was icy and incredibly thin. Thorgrim took deep, panting breaths to stave off dizziness and stepped onto the shallow balcony of the King’s High Porch. Twelve paces across, seven deep, a small balcony, whose balustrade pillars were fashioned in the shape of dwarf warriors. Cut from a natural bay in the mountain, the porch was invisible from below. When shut, the door behind Thorgrim blended seamlessly with the stone. Below him the high snowfields of Karaz-a-Karak plunged downwards. The horizon to the east was a dull silver, the rising sun fighting against the murk. In the few clear patches of the night-gripped sky overhead, only rings of black-green could be seen, the whirling remnants of the cursed Chaos moon.
From the top of the world, Thorgrim looked down upon the lesser peaks. They marched away to every horizon, untroubled by the wars of the creatures who lived among them. Only now in this private spot did the High King begin to open and examine the chambers of his mind. Karaz-a-Karak had resisted, but for how long? And how much stock could he put in the legend of the Rune of Azamar? He wished Ungrim had remained behind – he had never expected Bugman to – but perhaps he could do something to aid the realms of men. In some of the few accounts Thorgrim had received, the Emperor was dead; in others he was alive, but his nation was a ravaged ruin. If he still lived, he would need all the help he could get.