The Great Betrayal (20 page)

Gotrek raised a fist. His teeth were clenched tight as a sprung trap.

Despite himself, Snorri flinched.

‘I am your father, Snorri, but you should choose your next words very carefully indeed.’

Snorri bowed, and knew he had gone too far. ‘Tromm,’ he uttered. ‘I am sorry, father. I didn’t mean it.’

Unclenching his hand, letting his arm fall by his side, Gotrek sighed and turned his back. ‘Yes, you did.’

‘Please father, I…’

‘It’s all right,’ said Gotrek, waving off his son’s protests like they were flies. ‘Do you not think the same thoughts have entered my head?’ His eyes lingered on Rinnana’s empty seat. ‘How I miss her…’

When he faced Snorri again, there were tears in Gotrek’s eyes but he mastered his voice to stop it from cracking as he put both hands on his son’s shoulders.

‘One day the throne will be yours,’ he said, staring into Snorri’s eyes, ‘and I would have it that you’re ready to rule when that day comes. Being king is not about warring and killing, it is about keeping your realm and maintaining peace for as long as you can. It is the hardest thing you’ll ever need to do as king. Killing is easy. Any fool can make war and slay his enemies. Keeping a realm once it is intact is much more difficult. Don’t be so eager to take up axe and hammer, my son. It might be a while before you can put them down again and I can tell you they grow very heavy in that time.’

‘I
am
ready, father,’ Snorri said in a small voice, ‘if you would but see it. There is none amongst all the champions of the holds that can best me with axe or crossbow. Nothing scares me, nothing. I would purge the very Ungdrin Ankor of monsters to prove that I am a leader, a worthy successor.’

Gotrek let go, and began to pace.

‘Have you got chuff in your ears, for I can think of no other reason why you have heard nothing I have said.’

‘Father, I have–’

Gotrek stabbed a finger in the direction of the feast halls.

‘Sitting in there, Varnuf of Eight Peaks covets my throne. He would not seize it or try to take it from me by nefarious means, but nonetheless he believes he would be a better High King than I. He wants war with the elgi because it is popular amongst the other kings, and he also seeks to undermine me at every turn. We dawi are honourable, but we are also envious, greedy creatures. One always wants what another has, be it his gold or his armies, even his hold.’

‘Then declare grudgement against him. Tie your beards together and fight Varnuf. Show him who the High King of the Karaz Ankor is. I’ll do it now, father. Challenge him in your name.’ Snorri began to turn.

‘No! Do not suggest it. Do not even dare. If the only way a king can maintain order is to pummel his fellow lords into submission, his would be a short rule. Stand down or I shall put you down, by Grungni I swear it.’ Such was the intensity in Gotrek’s eyes that the prince shrank from it and was rooted to the spot.

Snorri rallied quickly. ‘Can I do nothing that meets your standards, father? Without chastisement and being brought to heel? Ever do my achievements fall short. What must I do to earn your respect?’

Gotrek sighed again, like he was a bellows and all the air was escaping from within him.

‘Not this.’

‘Then what? What must a son do to gain his father’s favour? He who vaunts all others above him out of spite.’

Gotrek had no answer. He dared not speak in case in his anger his words betrayed him.

‘You are a great king, my liege.’ There was a grimace of inner pain on Snorri’s face as he spat the words. ‘But you are a poor father.’

He turned around and stalked from the Great Hall.

Breathing hard, heart pounding in his chest, Gotrek watched him go.

It was several moments before he could speak again. When he did, it was to ask a question of the shadows.

‘Why won’t he heed me?’

From the darkness, a smoke-wreathed figure answered.

‘He is still young, and burdened with the weight of expectation,’ said Ranuld Silverthumb. Hidden from sight, he watched the prince keenly. ‘Do not be too hard on yourself, my liege.’

Gotrek’s shoulders slumped and he broke out his pipe to draw deep of its calming embers. ‘I am striving to leave him a legacy of peace, of a lasting realm unfractured by war and death. Yet he is more belligerent than ever.’

‘Were you so temperate when you mustered your armies during the greenskin purge? Or when you knocked Grundin and Aflegard’s heads together? What about the time when you journeyed to Kraka Drak and fought King Luftvarr for his fealty?’ Ranuld emerged from the darkness to add his smoke to that of his king’s. ‘You have fought your wars, my liege. Not only that, you won them all and have carved a great legend for the book of deeds. When Grungni calls you to his hall, you will sit at his table.’ He gestured to Gotrek’s departing son with his pipe. Snorri had only just reached the doors and slammed them on his way out. ‘Not so for Snorri Lunngrin, now Halfhand.’

Gotrek laughed. ‘Is that what they’re calling him now?’

‘His cousin thought of the name.’

‘A worthy honorific, I suppose. He said there were rats in the deeps of Karak Krum, who walk on two legs not four.’

‘And who speak.’

Gotrek turned to Ranuld Silverthumb, but the runelord was not mocking him.

‘And who speak, yes.’

‘It was a rat that gnawed off your son’s hand.’

The silence held an unspoken question that the runelord answered.

‘There
are
creatures in the deeps of Karak Krum, but they are not rats. At least, not as we know them.’

‘I’ll have the ironbreakers look into it. Borin can muster the lodewardens and seal up the underway. No dawi will set foot in there again.’

Ranuld said nothing. His mind was far away, lost to some unfathomable thought.

‘He’ll need a gauntlet for that hand,’ said Gotrek.

‘My apprentice shall fashion one under my tutelage.’

Gotrek half-glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. ‘And the other?’

‘
Az
and
klad
as you requested, my liege. But it will take some time. Master runes always do.’

Gotrek’s gaze returned to the distant bronze door of the Great Hall.

‘I hope he is worthy of it.’

‘That, my liege,’ said Ranuld, slowly disappearing back into the darkness, ‘is not up to you.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

Old Magic

Morek had been
listening to the rinkkaz from an alcove behind his master. Dutifully, he remained silent throughout the summit with his head bowed.

As Ranuld Silverthumb returned to the shadows he strode past his apprentice, uttering a single word.

‘Come.’

Morek followed, marvelling at how the statue of Smednir slid aside as his master worked the earth runes on the hidden doorway it concealed. Like many of the lesser ancestors, Smednir dwelled in the penumbral darkness that haunted the edges of the Great Hall. Few knew of the statue’s presence, let alone the existence of the hidden passageway that lay behind it.

Lost in thought as he counted the six hundred and thirty-four steps of the spiral down into the first of the deeps, Morek started when his master spoke.

‘You are prepared for what is before you, runesmith.’

From Lord Silverthumb’s tone, it was difficult to tell whether it was a question or even one that he wanted answering.

‘I am, master.’ The feebleness of his own voice surprised Morek.

Ranuld Silverthumb barked back at him.

‘I know you are, wazzock. I have made certain of it, sure as steel.’

Morek fell into silence again at the sudden rebuke, which only earned further reproach.

‘Have you no tongue, zaki? Bitten off by a grobi hiding under that last step was it?’

Morek resisted the urge to look back to see if there actually was a greenskin crouched under the last step. Their echoing footfalls, clacking against the stone, seemed louder in that moment.

Smoothed by the rivulets of water trickling from some underground lake or stream, the walls of the stairwell were also chiselled with runes of warding and disguise. None but a runesmith, or someone who was accompanied by one, could enter this place and not lose his way. By their natures, dwarfs were secretive but there were none more clandestine about their craft than the runesmiths. Other than its enchanted sigils, there was little else to distinguish the long, winding, descending corridor.

It was wide, massive in fact like so much of the subterranean Karaz Ankor. There were precious few sconces with lit braziers and those that did grace the coiling tunnel did so with a flickering, eldritch flame.

Occasionally, the hewn face of Thungi, lesser ancestor god of runesmiths, would glare at them from some sunken reliquary or shrine. Lord Silverthumb seemed to ignore it but his lips moved in silent oath-making as he passed by the patron of their guild and profession. Morek felt cowed by every stony glance, feeling more unready and unworthy than his master surely already believed. After the four hundred and fifty-eighth step, he found his voice again.

‘No, master. But I am unsure of what you want me to say.’

Lord Silverthumb grumbled another insult under his breath, hawked and spat as if the stupidity of his apprentice left a bitter taste in his mouth.

‘Aren’t you wondering,’ he said, ‘why I brought you to the rinkkaz?’

‘I… um…’

‘You are the second ufdi to refer to yourself as “um” in as many days.’ Ranuld Silverthumb came to an abrupt halt, bringing Morek to a stop too. So sudden was it that the apprentice nearly tripped and fell trying to avoid clattering into his master, who stood in front of him like a craggy bulwark and glowered.

‘Come here,’ he snapped, and seized Morek’s chin in an iron grip that had more in common with a vice than a dwarf’s fingers. Even the gnarled leathern skin of the runelord chafed and the apprentice barely stifled a yelp.

Lord Silverthumb pulled open Morek’s eye, using thumb and forefinger to check the sclera. His own eyes narrowed as he made an observation.

‘Are you a doppleganger wearing the flesh of Morek as a dwarf would wear a coat of mail? Hmm, well? Speak, fiend, if that’s what you are!’

Ranuld Silverthumb let him go, carried on walking.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I think you are him.’

Morek shut his open mouth, an answer no longer needed.

His master continued. ‘I shall tell you then why I brought you.’

Scents and sounds wafted and emanated from below as they closed on the deep. Morek discerned metal, the heady aroma of soot, the tang of heat pricking his tongue. Hammer rang on anvil, creating a monotonous but dulcet symphony that had oft been used to send beardlings to sleep. But there was something further… Old stone, dank, but which had seen and endured more than one age of the slowly turning world. Every time Morek placed his hand upon it to steady himself when a step was too broad to descend safely without being braced he felt the resonance within the rock, the sweat and earth of the dwarfs who had also once traversed this passage. Magic was thick in the air, and not just on account of the runes engraved into the walls. It saturated the corridor, bound to the rock, to the earth.

‘Master?’ Morek ventured after a few minutes of silence.

Lord Silverthumb scowled, flashed a scathing glance in his apprentice’s general direction. ‘What is it now, wazzock? Always talking… chatter, chatter, chatter,’ he said, mimicking a flapping mouth with each of his hands. ‘You’re no better than a rinn.’

Reddening beneath his beard, Morek said, ‘Why did you bring me to the rinkkaz, master?’

Lord Silverthumb sniffed either with regret or rueful derision, Morek couldn’t tell which.

‘Do you know how old I am, Morek?’ he asked.

‘I… um…’

‘Again with this “um”. Our noble ancestry has been watered down to a clutch of would-be lordlings and princes who when confused can only think of “um”. You and the prince, “ummers” both. Must be chuffing catching or something.’

Ranuld Silverthumb had lit a pipe and was blowing intricate smoke rings in the shape of runic knotwork through the flickering half-darkness. ‘I am venerable,’ he said, and now he sounded weary, thin like old parchment or a threadbare tarp stretched too wide over its frame. ‘The oldest living runelord of the Karaz Ankor. Knowledge is my legacy and I am to bequeath it to you so the greatest secrets of our craft do not die with me. But I am yet to be convinced if such power is for your generation of dawi. If I pass on my wisdom to you, I will be putting god-fire into your hands, Morek. Are we not too belligerent, so that such a thing would destroy us? But if I don’t, and allow this power to fade, to be consigned to dust and memory, then the dawi will fade as well. One is a slow demise, the other a flare of fire, ephemeral but bright.’

The talk of mortality and destruction sent Morek into a grim quietude. He got the impression of a great weight upon his master, a burden of which he had confessed but a little. Of course, he knew there was much below the forge halls, in the lowest deeps of Lord Silverthumb’s chambers, that he had never been privy to. Giving of knowledge, especially that which comes also with power, implied trust – but not only in the wisdom of the receiver, but also in his ability to keep such power safe and for what it was intended. How many had fallen to corruption and ruin where the pursuit of power was concerned?

Known as ‘Furrowbrow’, after his father and his clan, entire harvests could have been planted in the deep ripples lining Morek’s forehead at that moment.

Ranuld Silverthumb seemed not to notice his apprentice’s dilemma.

‘The High King has asked for a weapon and armour for his son. A gift if he is worthy of it, and token of his father’s esteem. Gotrek Starbreaker too, you see, has a legacy to hand down. All of us, we dwarf lords, carry that burden. You will forge them, az and klad, inscribe the master runes and speak the rites.’

Morek briefly bowed his head. ‘Tromm, master. It is a great honour.’

‘No, apprentice, it is your
duty
. To me, to your king, to your race. Legacy, lad, is all we veterans have left to us in the end.’

The last fifty steps were descended in silence until Morek asked just before they reached the lower deep, ‘You were gone for several days, master… Did you find what you were looking for?’

Lord Silverthumb shook his head. ‘No, lad, I didn’t. Old magic is getting harder to find.’ He scratched his beard as if pondering why. Unable to reach an answer, he carried on. ‘But I fear the world is changing because of it. Something lurks in the air, the earth. I fear it will change us, that it
is
changing us even now.’

Morek frowned and the furrows deepened. ‘Old magic?’

Ranuld Silverthumb shrugged. ‘Magic is magic, I suppose. It’s what’s done with or can be harnessed with it that makes some of it feel old. We dawi know magic. Its dangers are known to us too, so we trap it within stone and steel in order to control it, lest it control us and we become as stone.’

Morek didn’t fully understand, but chose to ask no further questions. His master had answered; he had to fathom its meaning for himself.

They were walking the slab-stoned passage that led to the iron forge where the clattering of hammers sounded and bellows wheezed in time with every strike of metal against metal. Bordering the threshold of the forge hall, Lord Silverthumb’s expression darkened as a cloud passing over the face of the sun.

‘Trouble is coming. It’s been coming for thousands of years but we’ll see it in our lifetime, Valaya have mercy. A great doom, lad, and a terrible darkness from which there may be no light.’ With the premonition bright like azure flame in the runelord’s eyes, he retreated into himself but spoke his inner monologue aloud. He rasped, voice barely rising above a whisper, ‘A gathering must be made, a conclave of the runelords.’ He shook his head, his faraway eyes no longer seeing the fuliginous dark of the forge or the lambent orange glow of embers at its yawning cavern entrance. ‘Won’t be easy. Some might be dead, others lost or asleep. Some can sleep for years at a time. It feels like an age since I last slept… Ancestors, all of us. Too old, too thin and past our time. Been centuries since the last conclave, but the wisdom of the ages can no longer be left to slumber. I fear it will be needed in the end…’

Ranuld Silverthumb blinked once and his voice returned to as it was before. ‘What are you staring at, wazzock? Look like you’ve seen one of those talking rats those two ufdis were blathering about.’ He snapped his fingers and made Morek jump. ‘Wake up,
wannaz
. Now,’ he added, heading into the forge, ‘Snorri Lunngrin, now Halfhand, needs a gauntlet fashioning. Find him before you begin the rune rites, examine his wound and see what’s to be done.’

Morek was half agape, unable to follow his master’s capricious nature in the slightest.

‘Well, go on then, zaki,’ said Lord Silverthumb, shooing his apprentice away like he was a beardling. ‘Bugger off and find the prince. And do it fast, the anvil calls.’

Ranuld had brought him all the way down to the
grongaz
only to dismiss him and send him back up its steps again. He was about to ask why but his master was gone, swallowed whole by soot and shadow.

Scratching his head, more furrow-browed than ever, Morek went to look for Snorri Halfhand.

For Ranuld, the
dark brought with it a sense of peace. Even with the hammers of the grongaz flattening and shaping, he found tranquillity in his own domain. Breathing deep of the soot and ash, of the metal and the heat, he sighed.