The Great Betrayal (23 page)

‘Thievery has been done to me!’ Incredulous at what he was hearing, Krondi stepped forwards, only for Rundin to impede his path. Instead, he shouted over the warrior’s massive armoured shoulders. ‘Grudgement must be made…’ Krondi scowled as the king was slowly led away and called after him, ‘If not against the elgi then against you, Skarnag Grum.’

The hill king raised his hand and the bearers stopped.

‘Heed this warning, dawi. Do not return to Kazad Kro and do not threaten me with grudgement in my own halls. Begone, or I will have you thrown out of my gates and off my rock.’

‘The reckoners shall hear of this,’ Krondi vowed, marshalling his anger but only barely. ‘I shall seek the counsel of the High King of Karaz-a-Karak.’

Grum’s bearers were moving again, the king’s voice growing fainter as they disappeared down the long hall towards his private chambers. ‘Do so with my blessing, for Kazad Kro will not hear your grievances further. Rundin,’ he called, ‘I am retiring to my counting house. Escort the dawi out.’

Rundin was about to oblige when Krondi snarled at him.

‘Lay hands on me and it’ll be the last thing you do.’

Palms up, Rundin said, ‘Leave without a fuss and there’ll be no need to.’

Krondi had his back to him when he replied. ‘How you can serve a king such as Grum I cannot fathom. All dawi are greedy and selfish bastards, but he is something worse.’

‘He is my king,’ said Rundin.

‘If that is the best you can say of him, you are being loyal to the point of blindness.’

At that Krondi stalked out of the hall.

Rundin was left alone with his thoughts. Silent as a tomb in the grand hall, the distant
chink
of coins being counted in King Grum’s treasure room clanged brashly. Beneath it, running as an undercurrent, was another sound. At first it was difficult to place, but Rundin listened hard and was rewarded. Laughter. It was laughter that he heard. Just the odd chuckle, a half-stifled giggle but which soon gave way to raucous hooting and guffawing.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Wrath and Ruin

Skirting the Worlds
Edge, the caravan of wagons was deep into the mountain passes now. Despite the fact he rode out ahead of Nadri, Krondi could ill-afford the detour to Kazad Kro especially when it had yielded nothing. His coffers were all but empty, wasted by elven treachery, and he felt the sting of that indignity worse than a dagger in his gut.

Driving the mules hard, he was determined to at least ensure his passenger reached Karaz-a-Karak in good time.

Perhaps it was his obsession with achieving that goal, or possibly some residual anger from his meeting with Skarnag Grum though it was days old, that blinded Krondi to the fact that he had strayed into the sights of a predator. Three days out of the domain of the hill dwarfs and he finally realised they were being tracked.

Cursing himself for ignoring the signs and allowing his good instincts to be clouded by selfish concerns, Krondi turned to his charge who was sitting quietly alongside him in the lead wagon.

‘We are being followed,’ he said. Krondi glanced over his shoulder, but all he could see was the lengthening shadows of the slowly dipping sun. Nightfall was not far off and they were too far away from Everpeak to reach it before the light died completely. Krondi did not want to still be on the road when that happened.

The old hooded dwarf beside him grunted something, appearing to ignite the smoking root in the cup of his pipe with his finger.

Hailing one of the guards riding at the back of the wagon, Krondi said, ‘Keep a sharp eye behind us. I don’t think we are alone out here.’

Durgi frowned, gesturing to the twenty or so warriors that rode on the four wagons. ‘Only a fool would attack such a well-defended caravan.’

‘That is what concerns me. A sharp eye, remember,’ Krondi told him, pointing to his eye before returning both hands to the reins.

They were approaching a rocky gorge. High-sided and narrow, it would funnel the wagons into a tight cordon, an ideal position for an ambush. Krondi tried to search the highlands at the summit of the gorge for signs of warriors. There were only craggy boulders and rough gorse bowing gently in the wind.

He muttered, ‘Something doesn’t feel right.’

On the path laid before them the wagons would be exposed but at least they would have room to manoeuvre if needed. Through the narrow defile of the gorge they’d be sheltered from the flanks but vulnerable to an attack from above. Making any sort of camp in this terrain was out of the question, so the two choices remained.

Take the path or travel through the gorge?

Krondi chewed his beard then said, ‘These mountains are my home. I know them as I know my own skin. So, why then do I fear them all of a sudden?’

‘Do you wish me to answer, beardling?’ asked the old dwarf with a voice like cracking oak.

‘Something hunts us,’ said Krondi, urging the mules to greater effort. ‘And anything bold enough to attack a party of over twenty armoured dawi in their own lands is something I do not wish to fight.’

‘We won’t reach Karaz-a-Karak,’ said the old dwarf, ‘not before they catch us.’

Krondi turned to the hooded dwarf sitting next to him smoking his pipe. His eyes grew a little wider. ‘So I am not imagining it. We
are
being followed.’

‘Have been for miles, lad.’

Krondi was incredulous. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘What good would that do? Kill us quicker, maybe. No, better to get closer to the hold, better to let them see us and know us for what we are.’

‘Their prey?’ asked Krondi.

Now the hooded dwarf turned and there was fire in his eyes, of forges ancient and forgotten, of jewels that glitter for eternity.

‘No. We are dawi, stone and steel. And we are not afraid. That is what they will see. Strength, lad. Strength and courage of our ancestors.’ The flame in the hooded dwarf’s eyes faded and he added, ‘Slow down, spare the mules or you ride the wagon train into the ground and do our hunters’ job for them.’

Krondi nodded, let his beating heart slow also to a dull hammering in his chest.

‘I have fought in dozens of battles, fought the urk and grobi, trolls and
gronti
. I am a warrior, not a merchant.’

‘Aye, lad,’ said the hooded dwarf, ‘but this is not a battle. There’s no shield wall, no brother’s shoulder to lock against your own. We are alone out here in the rising dark.’

The mouth of the gorge was approaching, forking off from the main path.

‘What should I do?’

Supping deep of his pipe, the passenger said, ‘It doesn’t matter. Either way, we will have to fight.’

Muttering an oath to Valaya, Krondi took the gorge.

The skryzan-harbark was
ruined. It slumped in Heglan Copperfist’s workshop a broken wreck, once a ship and now little more than kindling. Some of the hull had survived intact but the sails had been utterly destroyed, along with Helgan’s dreams, in the crash.

Under threat of expulsion from the guild, Master Strombak had commanded him to break the vessel down, strip it for parts, but faced with the reality of that Heglan was finding it hard to imagine such a formerly magnificent creation rendered into anything so prosaic as a stone thrower or heavy ballista. It would be an easy task, Heglan was gifted as an engineer, but that was also why he railed against the fetters of tradition the guild shackled him with.

His entire workshop was littered with designs, plans sketched with sticks of charcoal depicting various flying vessels he one day hoped to build. Incredibly detailed, each parchment schematic was filled with calculations, formulae for wind speed and velocity, theories on loft and chemical equations related to steam and pressure.

Of the engineers, Heglan was the only one to have fitted his workshop with a vast skylight. He had fashioned the glass himself and the massive aperture sat above the wreckage of his airship, letting in the sun to expose its many wounds. Shadows intruded on the scene as Heglan scrutinised through a pall of pipe smoke. Sharp, hooked beaks, arrow-straight wingspans and the suggestion of talons created a fearsome menagerie of silhouettes. Alongside his engineering endeavours, sitting between his many racks of tools, his cogs and half-built machineries, his oils and ropes, nails, bolts, screws, chisels, planes and work benches was his feathered host.

Here Heglan had created an aviary of the creatures of the sky he so wished to emulate. Preserved, meticulously posed and stuffed, there were hundreds. Often he had ventured in the low lands at the edge of the hold or taken a grubark out towards the ocean in the south. Dead birds were a common sight. Heglan had gathered them, studied their musculature, their pinions and the composition of their feathers. A notebook, bound in boar hide, was almost filled to the hilt with his scratched observations and sketches.

‘It should have worked,’ he muttered bitterly to an uncaring gloom. ‘It should have flown.’ He approached the wreck. In his tool belt he had a large hammer and a heavy-headed axe for the demolition. Running his hand over the hull, he winced every time he felt a crack or encountered a splinter. Rigging had broken apart like twine, masts snapped like limbs. The stink of spilled grog reeked heavily and spoiled the lacquering of the wood in places.

Shadow eclipsed most of the airship’s remains. Heglan kept many of the lanterns doused, lighting just enough in order to work. Cloud obscured the sun and any luminescence that might penetrate the skylight. Heglan preferred it this way. Darkness salved his thoughts and his stung pride.

Nadri had accomplished so much, earning the respect of his guild, his hold and the dwarfs of other holds beyond Barak Varr’s borders. Heglan was an engineer, a vaunted profession for any dwarf, but had thus far not achieved his potential. With their father Lodri dead and grandfather Dammin cold in his tomb, it mattered more than ever to honour them. Both brothers felt this keenly, and Nadri had remarked upon it when he had left Barak Varr to try and catch Krondi and the caravans.

‘Sons are destined to bury their fathers, Heg,’ he had said. ‘It’s only war that turns that around.’

Heglan had his head in his hands. ‘I’ve shamed them this day with my hubris.’

Nadri gripped his brother’s shoulders, made him look up. ‘Be proud of what you have achieved. You
honour
them. You will have your moment, Heg. Determination is what made the Copperfist clan what it is this day. Do not forget that. Do not give in to despair, either. We are dawi, stout of back and strong of purpose. We are the mountains, enduring and unyielding. Remember that and you will be remembered, just as they are.’

He gestured to the talisman around Heglan’s neck. It was the exact simulacrum of the one that Nadri also wore. Upon it were wrought the names of Lodri and Dammin, a son and father.

Heglan nodded, relieved from his torpor by his brother’s words of support.

‘But do this one thing for me,’ said Nadri, releasing Heglan’s shoulders to make his point clear with an outstretched finger.

‘Name it, Nadri.’

‘Heed Strombak, do not go against your master’s will and risk expulsion from the guild. Do that for me, Heg.’

Heglan went to protest, but the look in his brother’s eyes warned him to do so would earn further reproach. Reluctantly, he nodded.

Nadri nodded too, satisfied he’d been heard. ‘Good,’ he said, and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I’m bound for Karaz-a-Karak. Krondi will meet me there and we’ll be on our way.’ He glanced at the ruined airship, squatting in a forlorn heap inside the workshop. ‘I wish I could stay and help you with this, but I am already late.’

They clasped forearms, and Heglan embraced him.

‘What would I do without you, Nadri?’

‘Likely go mad,’ he laughed as they parted.

After that, Heglan had bidden him farewell. Dismissing the journeymen dwarfs who had helped retrieve the broken ship, he had been left alone. There he had stayed in seclusion for two days, pondering Nadri’s words and those of Master Strombak.

Almost on the last of his smoking root, he chewed the end of his pipe and regarded the broken ship through a veil of grey. Three days and he had not lifted a finger to break the ship apart. This part of the workshop was sealed, a vault where Heglan could craft in secret and not be disturbed. Other machineries could be fashioned to demonstrate his commitment to his master. This, the plan forming in Heglan’s mind inspired by the drawings on his workshop walls, he need never know about.

For the first time in three days, he gripped the worn haft of his hammer. Ever since his grandfather Dammin had shown him the proper way to use one, Heglan had regarded it as a tool to create, not destroy.

Purposefully, he strode towards the wrecked skryzan-harbark.

‘I am sorry, brother.’

A dwarf would fly and Heglan was determined to be the first.

Sweat lathered the
flanks of the mules. The beasts were gasping, shrieking with fear as Krondi drove the head of the wagon train like all the daemons of hellfire were at their heels.

For all he knew, they actually were.