Despite his wounding, Snorri still clutched the piece of wood in his maimed hand and thrust it into the dying embers of the lantern fire the dwarfs had rallied next to. Dried out from the many centuries down in the abandoned hall, it flared quickly, a spattering of spilled oil and the moth-eaten rag still attached to it adding to its flammability.
Snorri didn’t hesitate — his grip was already failing — and hurled the firebrand into the expanding pool of oil. It went up with a loud, incendiary whoosh, throwing back the rats clustered around it. Clutching their eyes, they squealed and recoiled, opening a path to the stairway.
Once he was sure his cousin was behind him, Morgrim was running. He didn’t bother to pull his hammer, and even threw his shield into the furred ranks of the rats to buy some precious time to flee. Snorri outstripped him for pace, his armour lighter and more finely crafted, and he reached the stairway ahead of Morgrim.
‘Down!’ shouted Snorri.
Still running, Morgrim replied, ‘What if the way isn’t clear?’
‘Then we’re both dead. Come on!’
The dwarfs plunged headlong down the stone steps, heedless of the way ahead, the way behind bracketed by flames. As swiftly as it had caught light, the lantern oil burned away and went from a bonfire to a flicker in moments.
The rats were quick to pursue.
Halfway down the stairs, which were broad and long, Snorri pointed with his maimed hand. Even in the semi-darkness, Morgrim could see he had lost one and a half fingers to the rat bite.
‘A door, cousin!’
It was wood, probably wutroth to have endured all the years intact and bereft of worm-rot. Iron-banded, studs in the metal that ran in thick strips down its length, it looked stout. Robust enough to hold back a swarm of giant rats, even rats that wore armour and carried blades.
Snorri slammed against it, grunting again; the door was as formidable as the dwarfs had hoped. Morgrim helped him push it open, on reluctant, grinding hinges.
The rats were but a few paces away when the dwarfs squeezed through the narrow gap they had made and shut the door from the other side.
‘Hold it!’ snapped Snorri, and Morgrim braced the door with his shoulder as the rats crashed against it. He could hear their scratching, the enraged squeals and the squeaks of annoyance that could not have been a language, for rats do not converse with one another. Frantic thudding from the other side of the door made him a little anxious, especially as he couldn’t see Snorri any more.
‘Cousin, if you’ve left me here to brace this door alone, I swear to Grimnir I’ll-’
Carrying a broad wooden brace, Snorri slammed it down onto the iron clasps on either side of the doorway.
‘You’ll what?’ he asked, catching his breath and wiping sweat from his glistening forehead.
Off to seek easier pickings elsewhere, the din from the rats was receding.
Snorri smiled in the face of his cousin’s thunderous expression.
After a few moments, Morgrim smiled too and the pair of them were laughing raucously, huge hearty belly laughs that carried far into the underdeep.
‘Shhh! We will rouse an army of grobi, cousin…’ Morgrim was wiping the tears from his eyes as his composure slowly returned.
‘Then we’ll fight them too! Ha! Aye, you’re probably right.’ Snorri sniggered, the last dregs of merriment leaving him. Wincing, he looked down at his hand and became abruptly sober. ‘Bloody vermin.’
‘I have never seen the like,’ Morgrim confessed. He pulled a kerchief from a pouch upon his belt.
Snorri frowned at it. ‘What’s that for, dabbing your nose when you get a bit of soot on it? Are you turning into an ufdi?’
Morgrim’s already ruddy cheeks reddened further. ‘’Tis a cloth,’ he protested, ‘for cleaning weapons.’
‘Of course it is,’ Snorri muttered as his cousin proceeded to wrap it around his bleeding hand. His smirk became a grimace as Morgrim tied the cloth a little tighter than necessary.
‘For now, it will suffice as a bandage,’ he said. He looked at the dark stain that was already blossoming red all over the kerchief. ‘It’s a savage bite.’
‘Aye,’ Snorri agreed ruefully, ‘I’ve half a mind go back in there and retrieve my fingers from its belly.’
‘Bet you would as well.’ Morgrim was exploring their surroundings, looking for a way onwards and preferably back to a part of the underway they knew. ‘That would be half-minded,’ he mumbled, attention divided. ‘Ha, ha!’ he laughed, turning to face his cousin. ‘Half a mind, to go with half a hand.’
Snorri scowled. ‘Very funny. Haven’t you found a way out of here yet?’
‘There’s a breeze…’ Morgrim sniffed, venturing forwards. Without the lantern, even with the sharp eyes of a dwarf, the darkness was blinding. ‘Coming from somewhere-’
Splintering rock, a loud smack of something heavy hitting stone and then a grunt arrested Morgrim’s reply.
It took Snorri a few moments to realise this was Morgrim and his cousin had fallen into some unseen crevasse.
‘Cousin, are you hurt?’ he called, only for the darkness to echo his words back at him. ‘Where are-’
Hard, unyielding stone rushed up to meet him as Snorri slipped on the same scree that had upended Morgrim. Daggers of hot pain pierced his back as he went down and he cracked his skull before the ground slid from under him and he fell.
Another thud of stone hitting flesh, this time his, like a battering ram against a postern gate. He felt it all the way up his spine and his left shoulder.
Groaning, Snorri rolled onto his right side and saw Morgrim looking back at him with the same grimace.
‘That bloody hurt,’ he said.
Morgrim eased onto his back, looked up at the gaping crevasse above. Dust motes and chunks of grit were spilling down from above like rain.
‘Must have fallen thirty, forty feet.’
He pushed himself up into a sitting position.
‘Feels like a hundred.’ Snorri was on his back, rubbing his swollen head.
‘Nothing to damage there,’ said Morgrim. He tapped the helmet he wore. A pair of horns spiralled from the temples and a studded guard sat snug against the dwarf’s bulbous nose. ‘Should wear one of these.’
‘Makes you bald,’ Snorri replied, prompting a worried look on his cousin’s face. A small stone struck Snorri’s brow and he grimaced again.
‘See,’ said Morgrim, getting to his feet and helping his cousin up. ‘Enough lying down.’ Once Snorri was vertical again, he brushed the dirt off his armour and checked he still had his hammer. ‘We need a way out.’
Without the lantern, it was hard to discern exactly where they had fallen. Doubtless it was one of the lower clan halls of Karak Krum, but there was precious little evidence of that visible in the shadows that clung to the place like fog.
Snorri sucked his teeth.
‘A pity you chucked our lantern oil.’
Morgrim bit his tongue to stop from swearing. Instead he looked around, sniffed at the air. ‘I smell soot,’ he said after a minute or so, then licked his lips. Another short pause. ‘Definitely soot.’
Snorri frowned, and went to recover his axe from where he’d dropped it when he fell. ‘All I can smell and taste is grit.’ He spat out a wad of dirt, hacking up a chunk of phlegm at the same time. ‘And rat,’ he added.
Morgrim’s face darkened. ‘No rat I have ever encountered spoke or carried a blade.’
‘That is because rats can’t do such things.’ Snorri tapped him on the forehead and made a face. ‘Perhaps you need a tougher war helm, cousin.’
Morgrim wasn’t about to be mollified. ‘I know what I saw and heard.’ His face grew stern, serious. ‘So do you. There is more than grobi and urk in these old tunnels. Who can say what beasts have risen in the dark beneath the world?’