Malekith was fast as quicksilver, darting between the spears of rock thundering out of the ground, running ahead of the quake. He weaved around the lazy blow of one daemon, severed the head from another. A third he impaled, before swinging the twitching corpse around to bludgeon three more. Destruction from the dwarf’s hammer rained around him, but did not touch the elf. Not one scratch.
Avanuir took a heavy toll, almost acting as an extension of the elf’s will and fury. Not to be outdone, the dwarf king weighed in with his axe, smashing into anything that had survived his first titanic blow.
Howling, bleating, furious, the daemons were slaughtered.
A heavy pall of dust engulfed the survivors, their balefire eyes the only thing visible at first. The storm presaged a seismic crescendo, an aftershock of power that cast the rest of the bloody daemons back over the edge of the rock. They fell screaming, raging before being dashed to paste or impaled on the upraised blades of the monsters below.
Malekith was crouched down, his head bowed. He held on to his spear haft, using it to anchor him to the rock until the storm had passed. With the tremors fading, he rose to his full height again.
The elf prince was as impressive as the dwarf.
A long coat of ithilmar mail draped his lithe but honed body. Nearly twice as tall as the High King, his face was thin and pale but noble. There was wisdom in his eyes, born of the esteemed bloodline of the greatest asur, but coldness too that the dwarf did not fully understand. At times, it bordered on cruelty. Angular, almost almond-shaped, the elf prince’s eyes were concealed behind a tall, conical helm that left only his mouth visible. A mane of griffon hair cascaded from the peak and ran the length of Malekith’s back.
Snorri was tired. Breathing hard, the dwarf leant his forehead against his hammer’s pommel and bent one knee to rest. It was almost genuflection. The oath on his lips had been spoken to Grungni, so it was as if he were praying at the altar of his own rune-crafted hammer.
The hand on his shoulder lifted him, and brought strength back to his weary limbs.
The dust was receding, spiralling away on the hot breeze. But through the slow dispersion of the cloud, claws could be seen and heard reaching for the summit of the rock.
‘Relentless bastards, aren’t they?’ the dwarf remarked, raising his chin.
Malekith pulled his gore-streaked spear from the ground. In his other hand was Avanuir. Although it had reaped many monstrous heads during the battle, the silver sword’s blade remained untarnished. Just a part of its magic — along with its brutal killing edge.
‘Old friend,’ said the elf, ‘I think it is almost time for us to depart.’ With the spear’s tip, he pointed to the battlefield below where their armies warred against the Chaos hosts. Judging by the fury of the unfolding melee, the clash had reached a tipping point.
‘Aye, lad, you may be right,’ Snorri admitted, deciding to slake his lust for grudgement on the beasts below. Weary, he got to his feet.
Malekith laughed. It was a hollow sound, but had genuine mirth.
‘Lad, am I? You ever manage to amuse me.’
‘Old, am I?’ Snorri replied, his grin as broad and wide as an axe blade.
Though he was far the younger of the two, an age of living beneath the earth, of sweating in the forges and furnaces of the underdeep, had left the dwarf with skin like baked leather. Unlike the elf, he was not immortal, although relatively long-lived.
‘See there?’ The elf hastened to the edge of the flat rock, thrusting again with his spear. He kicked at a daemon that had come close to the lip, giving it little thought as it plummeted hundreds of feet to its doom.
Snorri joined him, hacking into the face of another beast that had reached the edge of the Fist. The dwarf followed the elf’s pointing spear tip. Crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes deepened as he squinted into the fading sun.
‘A breach in their lines.’
Through the mad swell, the pitch and yaw of the battle, it was difficult to see at first, but the ranks of the Chaos host had thinned. Where before a seemingly impenetrable tide of monsters had barred the way for the elves and dwarfs to reach the feathered sorcerer and the bloated lord, now there was a gap. A slim gap. A slim hope, but hope it still was.
The dwarf’s plan was straightforward. Use them both as bait.
His thane-kings and the other lordlings of the elves too had argued against it but Snorri would not be swayed, nor Malekith who saw its virtues at once. The elf’s dragon had brought them high above the battlefield to the Fist of Gron where all the foul daemons of Ruin could see and taste them. Eager to kill the elf prince and the dwarf king, the horde would flock to them, but in their eagerness would leave their daemonic masters less well protected.
‘Your ruse has worked, old friend.’
‘Of course it worked, I am a dawi!’
Malekith laughed again, but this time it was deep and hearty.
‘Fighting at your side, I do not think I have ever been more at peace,’ he said, flashing the dwarf a warm smile.
Snorri frowned at him.
‘You find your solace in the oddest of places,’ he shrugged, ‘but then you are an elgi and as strange to me as the sky.’
Snorri grew stern. Despite this relative victory, the plan would only succeed if their armies held and could maintain the breach until he and Malekith arrived to lead them. The High King gazed out from the Fist of Gron, trying to gauge how the dwarfs were faring. They were fighting hard, thane-kings leading their warriors from the slopes of the distant mountain into the heart of the daemonic hosts and their beasts. On the vast left flank, lightning speared from runic anvils in their dozens and turned the monsters into ash. Immense pillars of flame rolled out from other runic war engines. Daemons and beasts caught up in the conflagration were swiftly rendered to charred hunks of tainted meat. Earth trembled as runesmiths in their hundreds called forth powerful quakes that opened up great chasms in the ground, swallowing scores of monsters before closing ominously.
Behind the stout phalanxes of dwarf warriors leading the attack, Snorri saw giants. Creations of stone and metal, these ancient golems were slow to rise and quick to slumber. Only the most powerful runelords could rouse them. Like the anvils, they were magical machineries fashioned by the supreme artifice of rune masters. The craft to forge them anew was lost, but the gronti-duraz lived still. It meant ‘enduring giant’ in the dwarf tongue.
On this great day when elf and dwarf stood together united in purpose, they had woken in their hundreds. The sight brought a tear to the old dwarf king’s eye. It was to be their final battle, for the magic to animate them was getting harder and harder to craft, seeping away like a draught through a slowly widening crack.
From the craggy flanks of Karag Vlak a horn blast resounded, seizing the High King’s attention. Ballistae gathered in serried ranks turned the air dark with flights of bolts the size of lances. Farther up the mountainside, mangonels and onagers hurled stones. Chunks of rock etched with runes of banishment and daemon-killing crashed and rolled amongst the horde. Beasts and daemons alike were crushed and skewered by the deadly rain pouring from the ranks of war machines.
Though monsters of every stripe had been unleashed against the armies of Snorri and Malekith, it was a plague-ridden tide that faced the dwarfs. Even high above the battlefield, Snorri could see hundreds of horned and hunchbacked daemons. Tallymen, he had heard them named. One-eyed, bloated bellied, the stench of their decaying flesh assailed his nostrils all the way up on the Fist of Gron.
Lesser, maggot-ridden beasts loped alongside them in their thousands. Some had once been men. Slug-like beasts with gaping maws like cages of acidic slime slithered behind them. Daemonic tallymen rode on the backs of the beasts, rusted bells ringing at their shrivelled necks. Diminutive, wide-mouthed daemons, covered in boils and pustules, swarmed like a rancid sea. They gathered at the edges of the horde, giggling like manic children.