Warhammer: The End Times stories from blacklibrary.com

THE RETURN OF NAGASH
Book One of the End Times

THE FALL OF ALTDORF
Book Two of the End Times

THE CURSE OF KHAINE
Book Three of the End Times

THE RISE OF THE HORNED RAT
Book Four of the End Times

THE LORD OF THE END TIMES
Book Five of the End Times

DEATHBLADE
A Tale of Malus Darkblade

GOTREK & FELIX: KINSLAYER
A Gotrek & Felix novel

GOTREK & FELIX: SLAYER
A Gotrek & Felix novel

IT IS AN AGE OF LEGEND.

In the elder ages when the world was young, elves and dwarfs lived in peace and prosperity. Dwarfs are great craftsmen, lords of the under deeps, artificers beyond compare. Elves are peerless mages, masters of the dragons, creatures of the sky and air. During the time of High King Snorri Whitebeard and Prince Malekith, these two great races were at the pinnacle of their strength. But such power and dominion could not last. Fell forces now gather against elves and dwarfs. Malekith, embittered by his maiming in the Flame of Asuryan, seeks to destroy them both but still darker powers are also at work. Already strained, disharmony sours relations between them until only enmity remains. Treachery is inevitable, a terrible act that can only result in one outcome... War.

The dwarf High King Gotrek Starbreaker marshals his throngs of warriors from all the holds of the Karaz Ankor, whilst the elves, under the vainglorious and arrogant Caledor II, gather their glittering hosts and fill the skies with dragons.

Mastery of the Old World is at stake, a grudge in the making that will last for millennia. Neither side will give up until the other is destroyed utterly. For in the War of Vengeance, victory will be measured only in blood.

CHAPTER ONE

Fires in the Sky
236th year of the reign of Caledor II

‘I might be a damn zaki, but scupper me if I don’t glory in all this.’

Heglan Copperfist smiled at the other dwarf’s outburst. He looked up from the airship’s broad deck and to the wheelhouse where Nugdrinn Hammerfoot was scratching anxiously at the hollow of his missing eye. The old sea captain had adjusted magnificently to the demands of his new vocation – that of sky captain. Far below them, the snowy peaks of the Vaults peaked out from a mantle of misty cloud, a sight to awe the heart of any dawi, moving him to stark terror or, as in Nugdri’s case, exuberant jubilation.

The engineer couldn’t indulge the same thrill as Nugdri. He couldn’t afford to. A grand honour had been given to him, but along with that honour had come a terrible obligation – a grim duty that pressed down upon him with all the weight of the great rock Durazon.

No, he wouldn’t fail. He couldn’t fail. He was the last of the Copperfists, the last of his line. Only Heglan could redeem the legacy of his grandfather, exonerate the engineering theories of Dammin Copperfist and erase the ridicule and shame that had been heaped upon his name. Only Heglan could bestow upon the arsenals of King Brynnoth and Barak Varr a weapon that could match the might and horror of the drakk and their elgi masters.

Only Heglan would have the glory of avenging his brother Nadri Gildtongue. Destroying the dragons, eliminating the most devastating weapon in the arsenal of the elgi, would pave the way for a quick and decisive victory against the hated foe. A fleet of airships descending upon Tor Alessi, raining havoc upon the city as the drakk had wrought havoc upon the dawi armies.

In response to Heglan’s command, Nugdri coaxed the skryzan-harbark still higher. The rest of the crew, down on the main deck, chewed nervously at their beards, eyes locked on the enormous leather sack suspended above them. Filled with buoyant gas, the air-bag was what enabled the skryzan-harbark to defy the pull of rock and earth. Great copper vanes, whirling about at rapid speed, provided the ship’s propulsion, but it was the air-bag that was the true triumph of Heglan’s invention. At higher altitudes he’d found that gas escaped from the air-bag. A new coating derived from a mix of resin and tar was proving an effective sealant thus far. If the skryzan-harbark were to contend with dragons, Heglan felt it essential that the airships be able to strike from above the monsters. He’d studied birds for many years and one thing had been imprinted on his mind: a predator always swooped down upon its prey from above.

Heglan joined Nugdri on the wheelhouse. ‘Glory and danger go together like pick and hammer,’ he cautioned the captain. They were climbing into the clouds, the mists of the mountains wrapping around them like a grey cloak. ‘The greater the glory, the greater the danger.’

Nugdri stamped his metal foot against the deck, a habit he had that he claimed drew the attention of his ancestors and reminded them to send better luck his way than they had when he’d lost the appendage. ‘If you die seeking glory, there’s no shame in that.’

The engineer’s expression grew sombre. ‘There is if others are depending on you,’ he stated. ‘Pride is a poor excuse to offer the dead.’ He turned his head, trying to pierce the clouds with his stony gaze. The skryzan-harbark were wondrous creations, but their mastery of the air wasn’t unquestioned. Older and fouler things rode the winds these days.

Signal fires had alerted sentinels in Karak Norn, and from there the alert had passed to Karak Izor and Karak Hirn, finally reaching Barak Varr, the great sea hold, the mighty dwarf bastion on the Iron Gulf. There were few dwarf kingdoms as powerful as Barak Varr and none that possessed the amazing weapons Heglan had devised. It was to King Brynnoth and Barak Varr that the embattled holds in the Grey Mountains and Vaults turned when the elgi were on the march. It was to Barak Varr that the alarm was sent.

The warning had been only one name and one word. Kazad Thar. Dragons. That was enough to relay that Kazad Thar was under attack by the hated drakk.

It was rare that any king of the dwarfs made a decision quickly, but it had taken Heglan and Guildmaster Strombak only a few minutes to convince King Brynnoth that the skryzan-harbark must be sent to help the stricken fortress. The hill dwarfs – the skarrenawi – were yet cousins of the dawi and it would be an offence to the ancestor gods to abandon any dwarf to the depredations of the elgi and their beasts. Heglan had proven that they could confront the dragons in their own element.

Whether they could win… That was still a question that carried with it considerable doubt. The dwarfs had fought many battles with dragons in their long history, but the gold-grubbing wyrms that threatened their treasure vaults and mines weren’t nearly so destructive as the drakk trained by elves. It took a lot to even injure one of those dragons. To kill one would require more weaponry than a single skryzan-harbark could carry. At least, if the airships bore ordinary weaponry.

Test upon test had been made, but even Heglan couldn’t be certain that he had the weapons he needed. Ideally, he would have liked to coax one of the drakk out, lure it into a trap and prove the efficacy of their new ordnance under controlled conditions. The war, however, wouldn’t wait for his experiments. Year by year, the War of Vengeance became more savage and bitter, the elgi stealing forth from their cities to raid and pillage the scattered mines and outposts of the dawi. Dragons would scorch anything that moved on the roads, forcing the dwarfs to delve new branches of the Ungdrin Ankor to escape their flames. Elgi sorcery had withered the crops and herds that fed many of the strongholds. Elgi ships had even dared to challenge Barak Varr for control of the Iron Gulf and the outlying seas.

The dawi had returned the outrages of the elgi with methodical deliberation. Twilight raids with axe and fire that reduced orchards and vineyards to so much ruin. Bold attacks with hammer and pick that toppled towers and walls. Grim ambushes against elgi knights and soldiers that demonstrated to the arrogant tall-ears the mettle of dwarfish courage and dwarfish steel. The dawi didn’t need sorcerers and drakk to fight their battles. To answer the grudgements laid against the elves – the murder of Prince Snorri Halfhand and the unforgivable humiliation of High King Gotrek’s ambassadors – it would take dwarfish blades. The blood of the elgi Prince Imladrik was but a drop in the sea of retribution that awaited the enemy.

From his vantage, Heglan could see the artillerists at their assigned stations, each ready to execute the manoeuvres they had drilled for months. Six sleek, bronze-framed bolt throwers were anchored to the mid-deck, three to a side. Metal mantlets shaded each platform, protecting the weapons while at the same time preventing them from being elevated to such an angle that they could threaten the air-bag above. Blockers set into the deck itself likewise arrested any divergence left and right. The bolt throwers required such precautions – their frames were wonders of engineering, designed by Bagdrimm Tallbeard of Karak Kadrin. Fitted to complex swivels, the weapons could pivot from side to side as well as depress or elevate. Each weapon was so expertly balanced that a single dwarf could manipulate it.

It had taken much gold and more flattery for Guildmaster Strombak to secure Bagdrimm’s invention for the skryzan-harbark, but Heglan knew it would be worth it. For the airships to be true predators of the sky they needed more than just wings; they needed claws as well. Claws capable of knocking a dragon out of the air.

Claws of fire.

There was pride in Heglan’s eyes as he focused on the ammunition positioned beside each bolt thrower. The great ashwood arrows with their barbed, steel heads were only the vehicle for the true bite of the skryzan-harbark. Their real power lay in the small stone pots that would be fixed to each arrow with chain just before it was loaded. The pots were sealed with pitch, a short length of fuse dangling from the mouth. The arrows would strike a dragon hard, but the dwarfs had seen time and again how difficult it was to pierce a drakk deep enough to really hurt it. Thus each missile’s barbed head was meant only to hold the shaft in place until the burning fuse touched off the contents of the pot.

Heglan had worked long and hard to find the ideal compound to use. He’d been inspired by ‘mine-damp’, the explosive build-up of gas that often proved so devastating during the dawi’s excavations. He’d tried very hard to find just the right mixture to recreate that destructive power. In the end, he’d been forced to appeal to the engineers’ guild, to see if a brother engineer might have the answer that was proving so elusive to him.

The answer was Tharzharr – ‘thunder-fire’ – but it came not from another engineer, but a displaced thane. Drogor Zarrdum, a traveller from the distant hold of Karak Zorn, had brought the secret of Tharzharr to Barak Varr. It was an incendiary of unmatched ferocity, capable of melting its way through solid steel. It was more than merely an explosive: when it was unleashed, it would splash across a target in a burst of green fire, burning its way through whatever suffered its touch.

It was a hideous weapon, but so too were the drakk the elgi employed to reduce dwarf warriors to cinder and smoke. There was no room for sentiment in war, no place for conscience and half-measures. To be victorious, you had to be more ruthless than your enemy. If Heglan ever had any doubts about that, he only needed to recall the name of his ship to cast them aside.

Nadri’s Retribution. It would bring retribution. It would make the elves pay in blood for his brother and all the others who had been treacherously killed by the feckless elgi. The Book of Grudges kept by each hold was filled with debts against the elves. The skryzan-harbark would be the vessels to settle those scores.

Lord Teranion had to remind himself that the smell of burning flesh was repugnant, that it should horrify him to the very core of his being. He couldn’t exult in what he had unleashed. He had to remember who he was, what it meant to be asur. He couldn’t allow centuries of civilisation and culture to slip away, shed like a worn-out skin.

The dragon becomes you. You become the dragon.

Teranion recited the old proverb to himself. How many times had he heard that warning spoken by Prince Imladrik? Somehow, no matter how often a dragon rider was told, the wisdom behind the words would fade away. The meaning would recede, all but forgotten until that moment, that instant of horror when an elf felt his identity being consumed by a force so primal it was older than the gods. The arrogance of most elves led them to believe dragons were their servants, that somehow these mighty beasts were beholden to them. The truth was that the best any asur could hope to inspire in a dragon was a sort of tolerant amusement, the indulgent affection bestowed upon a beloved pet by its owner. In all the long history of the elves, there had been only a few elves wise and powerful enough to truly be called Master of Dragons.

Away to the south and east, Teranion could see the forbidding heights of the peaks the dawi called ‘the Vaults’. They stood as a stark reminder to him of the monumental task ahead of his people. To destroy the dawi, to bring the dwarfs to their knees, would be like breaking down the very mountains in which they dwelled. It was an effort of such enormity that it made the heart shudder, but was ever such an attempt more necessary? If the dawi weren’t brought to heel, then the asur would never know peace again in their colonies. The shining promise of Elthin Arvan would be smothered in the smoke of war.

How, then, to cast down the mountains? One stone at a time! And Kazad Thar, the little hill fort crouching in the shadows of the Vaults, would be that first stone.

At Lord Teranion’s urging, Khalamor dived down upon the dwarf hold. Before the lookouts in the crude stone towers spotted the drake, the dragon’s fire was already rushing across their walls. Burning dwarfs leapt screaming from the ramparts as Khalamor rushed past. The dragon’s long tail slashed out at the battlements, cracking against them like thunderbolts. Rock crumbled and masonry shattered as the tremors of the impact shivered through the fort.

The dwarf warriors still on the walls and towers trained their weapons on Khalamor as the drake circled around. Horns and gongs rang out as the alarm was sounded and terrified dwarfs fled towards the great gates of their hold. Crossbows and bolt throwers sent a barrage of steel-tipped missiles flashing at the dragon in a vain effort to drop it from the sky. Those few bolts that struck the drake lacked the strength and velocity to penetrate its thick scales. The roar that bellowed from Khalamor’s jaws was almost scornful as it echoed down upon Kazad Thar.

Their attention fixed upon Khalamor, the dwarfs weren’t able to bring their heavy weapons to bear when a second dragon swooped down on them from the opposite side of the hold. Again, dragon fire blasted the ramparts, spilling burning dwarfs down the slopes of their hill. Reptilian claws dug into the wall, tearing a section from its foundations and leaving a great gash in the side of the fort. As the drake flung the crumbling section of masonry earthwards, a burst of flame shot from its maw and into halls its attack had exposed.

Khalamor swept back around, hurling itself at the skarrenawi as they turned their efforts towards fighting Lord Heruen and Mornavere. Teranion felt a contemptuous pity for the miserable creatures in that instant before his steed’s fire washed down upon them.

Teranion brought his dragon crashing down upon the gatehouse, pulverising an armoured dwarf warchief beneath the reptile’s claws. Khalamor’s jaws closed about the frame of a bolt thrower, ripping it from its mount and dragging the weapon and one of its crew away. Ballista and dwarf alike were hurled across the battlements by a turn of the dragon’s head, smashing the crossbowmen assembling there. Dozens of dwarfs were crushed by the wreckage, their bodies flattened against the crenellations behind them. For good measure, Khalamor sent a gout of fire chasing after the survivors as Teranion urged the drake skywards.

Below, the walls of the dwarf hold were but so much rubble. Teranion could see Heruen upon Mornavere sweeping above the carnage. A blast of flame erupted from the dragon’s jaws, engulfing a group of bearded warriors as they tried to pick themselves from the wreckage. Screams rang out as the dragon fire immolated them. They didn’t have a chance, no more than a mouse in the jaws of a fox.

Such was the way of war, Teranion reminded himself. It wasn’t all glory; it wasn’t all honour. It was dirty and it was despicable. It drew out the most selfless sacrifice from those who fought, and then demanded of them the most remorseless brutality. For only in unrestrained brutality could there ever be an end to the war.

Khalamor dived down upon the burning hold. The dragon’s claws ripped into the face of a great stone idol. For a moment, the reptile perched there, spitting fire into the tunnel-like openings to the lower deeps of the dwarf citadel. Teranion noted a score of bearded warriors rushing from behind his steed. At his urging, the dragon whipped its powerful tail around, sending the dwarfs sprawling with broken bones and ruptured organs.

It was all necessary, Teranion reminded himself. This horrific destruction was necessary. Lord Salendor had long urged that the war be extended to the skarrenawi. The hill dwarfs hadn’t taken up arms against the asur the way their mountain cousins had, but they still gave the enemy material support. Iron ore, copper, timber, wool, grain – all these flowed from the skarrens to the karaks of the mountain kingdoms. If that flow of resources was stopped, the dawi would find it more difficult to prosecute their war against the asur.

As Teranion urged his dragon back into the sky, he reflected upon the other reason for this vicious attack. The mages in Tor Alessi had scryed some new weapon being developed by the dwarfs. A weapon that could irreversibly shift the balance of power in Elthin Arvan. This attack, therefore, wasn’t simply to destroy the skarrens, but to draw out this mysterious threat.

Draw it out and destroy it.

Khalamor leapt from its stony perch, tearing the idol’s head from its shoulders. As the dragon began to climb, it let the enormous head crash back to earth. Scores of stunned, charred dwarfs were crushed as the mass of stone slammed into the ground and rolled through their ruined halls.

It was all necessary, Teranion reminded himself again, to preserve the colonies and protect the Asur Empire. So long as he took no pleasure in killing, he could still claim to be civilised.

Nadri’s Retribution slowly descended from the clouds, the other airships in Heglan’s fleet following after their flagship. As the skryzan-harbark entered the open air, Heglan could see the countryside laid out before him. The vast swathes of lush green forest to the north, the dim wall of the Vaults to the south. Below were green fields and hill country, the lands that had been settled by the skarrenawi.

More than most of the dawi, Heglan could accept the peculiarity of disposition that had made the skarrenawi quit the vaults and tunnels of the Karaz Ankor for the open skies of the lowlands. There was a majesty of the surface world that most of his people were oblivious to, a wonder as profound and magnificent as anything to be found in the roots of the mountains.

Now, however, Heglan found little beauty or magnificence to appreciate. As he looked over the countryside he could see thick pillars of smoke billowing up from the hills. The farms and fields of the skarrenawi were burning. A great smouldering ruin was all that remained of Kazad Thar. The hill fort had been almost razed to the ground, its walls broken open, the halls within blasted with fire and clawed out. Sections of the hold had been scorched with such fiery fury that the walls were as smooth as glass. Other sections were ragged and ripped, scourged by monstrous talons. Columns and pillars, some as much as twenty feet around, lay toppled like the toys of a petulant child. The great gates, which had once stood so proudly, were naught but twisted iron and splinters now, hurled down from the heights to lay crumpled at the foot of Kazad Thar.

A hold of thousands of skarrenawi had been reduced to soot and cinders. Gazing upon it, Heglan felt the blood boiling in his veins. A new urgency wrapped itself around his thirst for revenge. Elgi had done this. Elgi and their thrice-damned drakk!

Heglan pressed his spyglass to his eye, staring down at the shattered husk of Kazad Thar. The charred corpses of dwarfs lay strewn all about the rubble. The dragons made no distinction between dawi or rinn, longbeard or child. Pools of bubbling metal were all that remained of the fort’s armouries and treasure vaults, and mounds of soot and ash were all that remained of timber and wool. The drakk had taken pains to leave nothing of value behind. Even so, Heglan could see clutches of stunned survivors stumbling about the ruins, trying to excavate the escape tunnels and boltholes where more of their kin might yet remain.

The urge to order his air-fleet to descend and help the survivors gnawed at Heglan’s heart. He’d been entrusted with command of the skryzan-harbark by King Brynnoth himself. Not one of Barak Varr’s sea captains or thanes, not one of the stronghold’s generals or warriors. The king had chosen Heglan, an engineer, because he knew the machines, knew what they were capable of. Capability meant more than just what the skryzan-harbark could do but what they should do.

There was only one decision to make, despicable as it felt to Heglan. The survivors of Kazad Thar had to be left on their own. If the skryzan-harbark descended to help, then the airships themselves would be vulnerable to attack.

‘Sky-master Heglan,’ Nugdri called to the engineer. The hammer-footed captain pointed his hand towards the airship leading Heglan’s fleet. There were seven skryzan-harbark, all the workshops of Barak Varr had been able to build since the conquest of Oeragor. Each was a marvel of engineering and invention, but Heglan considered the ship at the fleet’s vanguard to be his finest work. It was a great black-hulled behemoth of the air, nearly twice the size of Nadri’s Retribution and boasting more weaponry than any two airships.

King Snorri it had been named and it was under the command of the late prince’s friend and confidant Drogor Zarrdum. Heglan and King Brynnoth had offered the thane whatever price he wanted for the secret of his fire. A flame that burned hotter than zonzharr and which could melt steel in the blink of an eye was worth the ransom of a king. Drogor had spurned gold and jewels, however. What he wanted was one of Heglan’s airships to command. What he wanted was the chance to strike back against the elgi and avenge the honour of Snorri Halfhand.

Lanterns blinked from King Snorri’s aft. The code was a derivation of that employed by the engineers’ guild, a system of flashes that conveyed information quickly and efficiently. As Heglan interpreted the message being sent from Drogor’s ship, he felt rage boiling up inside him.

‘They’ve spotted what’s left of a skarrenawi army, warriors from Kazad Mingol caught rushing to help their kinsmen,’ Heglan told Nugdri. ‘The drakk burned them on the march. There’s a two-mile scorch across the hills where King Orrik’s army was reduced to cinders.’ The engineer’s expression darkened, his eyes taking on a fiery gleam. He raised the spyglass to his eye again and turned his gaze to the north-west. Dimly, he could see what the spotters on the King Snorri had seen. There was smoke rising in the direction of Kazad Mingol.

It seemed the outrages of the drakk weren’t over. Well, this time the elgi and their wyrms would pay for lingering at the scene of their crimes. This time the dwarfs had the weaponry to hit back.

‘Signal all ships,’ Heglan bellowed, his voice so loud that he didn’t need the bronze speaking horn to be heard by every dwarf of his crew. ‘All speed to Kazad Mingol! All artillerists to their stations! We hit the drakk high and hard. We make the elgi know what it means to defile the hearths of the dawi!’

Two dragons were circling above the shattered walls of Kazad Mingol. They had broken through the outer fortifications, sending great jumbles of earth and stone rolling down the southern face of the hill the stronghold had been built upon. Some of the upper deeps had been exposed by the destruction, great galleries of granite lined with broken pillars and archways. Here and there the titanic statue of an ancestor god towered above the rubble, staring with stony malignance at the flying reptiles as they swooped down and spat flame upon the dwarfs below.

Two dragons: a great monster with scales of alabaster and silver, and a smaller beast with an almost bronzed colouring. The elven riders would have been lost to view upon their steeds if not for the banners fastened to their armoured backs, pennants of sapphire and emerald that snapped and crackled in the wind. Sometimes one of the elves would brandish his lance, shouting at his foes as his steed scattered them in its fury. Sometimes one of the dragons would snatch up a clawful of dwarfs and carry them high into the air before opening its talons and letting them hurtle to the ground far below.

For all their savagery, the dragons worked in concert with each other. When one wyrm dived in to attack, the other would circle overhead, watching for any threat to its companion. Any sign of a ballista being turned towards the marauding dragon, any hint of crossbowmen gathering together to loose a volley, and the watching drakk would snarl a warning to its fellow and then dive down to spit fire upon their foe.

Heglan at once appreciated the mistake the drakk and their riders had made. They’d confined their vigilance to the ground. Secure in their supposed dominance of the heavens, they didn’t spare a glance at the sky above. That was an error the murdering wyrms and their elgi wouldn’t live to regret.

The engineer barked a command to his signalman, sending prearranged orders to the other airships in his fleet. Three of the vessels would divert northwards and hold themselves in reserve, coming into the fight only if it looked like the dragons would escape. The rest, including Nadri’s Retribution and King Snorri, would circle around and try to engage the drakk from the south-east. The fiery weapons Drogor had provided were vicious things. Like the elements they were named for, the flames wouldn’t distinguish between friend and foe. Heglan wanted to strike from such a quarter that he could minimise the risk to Kazad Mingol and its inhabitants. It would be small consolation to them if they were cooked by dawi fire instead of an elgi drakk.

As the airships started their manoeuvres, the dragons noticed them. Heglan cursed when he saw the reptiles turn away from the burning halls of Kazad Mingol. If the drakk had risen to confront the skryzan-harbark, such a tactic would have played into the engineer’s hands. The wyrms would have brought themselves within range of the dwarfs’ bolt throwers. The pots of Tharzharr would have burned the beasts out of the sky. Instead, the pair of dragons were in full retreat, speeding away towards the north and the elf cities. Several of the airships loosed bolts at their foes, but the shafts fell well short of the mark, spinning downwards to shatter in fiery splendour against the earth.

‘After them!’ Heglan roared. With what they had seen at Kazad Thar and now witnessed above Kazad Mingol, there wasn’t a dwarf in the fleet willing to countenance the escape of the dragons. The monsters and their riders would pay for the havoc they had wrought. They would answer for the grudges born from their rampage!

Nadri’s Retribution and the other airships began to descend at an angle, trying to get into range of the dragons below. Smoke from the burning stronghold billowed across the airship’s bow, drawing tears from Heglan’s eyes.

‘Drakk portside!’ Nugdri cried out. The captain kept one hand locked about the wheel as he shook his fist at a vast, blue-scaled monster. The dragon was swooping down at the airships, flames billowing from its jaws. The wyrm had been hiding in the clouds, biding its time until the skryzan-harbark were below. In the distance, Heglan could see a fourth dragon diving at the three airships he’d sent to flank the first two wyrms.

It was an ambush! The elgi had been waiting for the skryzan-harbark, waiting for Heglan to come rushing to the defence of the kazads.

Even more infuriating to Heglan was the realisation that so long as the wyrms stayed above the airships, there was no way the dwarfs could bring their weapons to bear against them…

The grim fatalism that had hung so heavy about Rundin’s mind on the frantic march from Kazad Kro became pride when he saw the skryzan-harbark appear above Kazad Mingol. Rumours of the wondrous airships of Barak Varr had reached even the halls of the skarrenawi, but he’d never imagined he’d see them for himself. The dawi had come! They had not abandoned their cousins, despite the arrogance of High King Skarnag.

Thinking of his king made Rundin’s heart go cold. When the plight of the other hill forts was made known to Skarnag Grum, the High King had ordered almost his entire army to march with haste to the embattled strongholds. From a strategic sense, the king’s decree was reckless. From a moral standpoint, it was despicable. Rundin had been there to see his king react to the news that Kazad Thar was being attacked by dragons. Skarnag was thrown into a panic, not from any concern over the misery of his subjects or the untold numbers of skarrenawi being slaughtered by the drakk. No, the miserable, gold-crazed despot was terrified that the dragons would strike his own stronghold and steal his treasure.

That was all Skarnag Grum cared about. That was why the High King of the skarrenawi finally deployed his army. Not to fight the elves and join the War of Vengeance. Not to protect the lands and lives of his subjects. Not to defend the honour of hearth and hold.

Such was the miserable creature to whom Rundin had sworn oaths of fealty, loyalty and service. He wondered if there could be any more shameful burdens a dwarf could take upon himself. He wondered if his ancestors could ever forgive him for the disgrace he had brought upon them when he bent his knee before Skarnag Grum.

‘Seven of them,’ Furgil cheered as he counted the airships. The ranger captain and a dozen of his followers had joined Rundin’s warriors when they were only a few hours into their march. The rangers of Karaz-a-Karak made a welcome addition to Rundin’s own pathfinders, helping them scout ahead of the main columns as they made their way towards Kazad Mingol. The plan had originally been to join forces with King Orrik’s warriors and then move on to support King Kruk at Kazad Thar.

Instead, they had discovered Kazad Mingol burning. Rundin had been thankful for the caution that had him split his force into three separate columns. If the dragons attacked one, then at least there was a chance the other columns could engage the wyrms.

Now, of course, such caution looked foolish. Rundin couldn’t imagine anything opposing the magnificent airships. He was especially impressed with the flying colossus that could only be the flagship. He felt a tingle of pride when he read the golden runes upon its prow. King Snorri.

‘The elgi will rue this day,’ Rundin spat. ‘Their treachery has brought doom upon their beasts.’

Furgil nodded. ‘Aye, and when the drakk lie burning, the dawi will march upon Tor Alessi. This time their walls will fall and the elgi will be driven into the sea.’

‘The skarrenawi will be there,’ Rundin vowed. ‘After this, Skarnag Grum cannot keep us from joining the war.’ Bitterness dripped from the warrior’s mouth as he thought of his king’s reticence, his all-consuming greed. The skarrens should have been united with their mountain brothers from the beginning.

One of Rundin’s warriors thrust his axe skywards, shaking it at the clouds. ‘Look! More drakk have come!’

The dwarfs watched as two more dragons swooped down from the sky, diving at the skryzan-harbark from above. Only a heartbeat before, the airships had seemed invincible. Now, with the dragons speeding down upon them, that illusion was broken. As the reptiles flew at the airships, bolt throwers loosed their missiles at the monsters. Massive spikes of wutroth and steel were hurled into the sky, arching upwards. However high the artillerists elevated their weapons, though, they were unable to strike at the dragons above them.

The beasts kept their distance, soaring away from the airships after spewing gouts of flame upon them. But the ships’ air-bags had been coated to resist even dragon fire, each blast of the reptiles’ incendiary breath breaking apart like a crashing wave against a cliff. If the airships were unable to harm the dragons, then it seemed the dragons were unable to harm the skryzan-harbark.

The brief stalemate was broken when one of the dragons suddenly streaked downwards, flashing directly between the massed airships. The crews were compelled to hold their fire out of fear of hitting their own comrades. Unopposed, the drakk swept towards the mammoth King Snorri. Its fiery breath splashed across the stern, protective runes flaring with blinding light as their magic thwarted the caustic blast. The dragon started to dart away, rising back into the sky. Then, before any upon the huge airship could react, the monster turned its ascent into a vicious dive.

Every precaution had been taken to guard the skryzan-harbark against the fiery breath of the dragons, but the same defences couldn’t be made against their claws. Talons that could rend steel and crush granite lashed out, digging into the side of King Snorri’s air-bag. A stream of greyish gas wheezed from the jagged rent, striking the drakk as it flew past. Buffeted by the escaping gas, the dragon was forced downwards.

The instant the reptile dipped within the elevation of their weapons, the dwarf artillerists loosed a salvo into the beast. The dragon howled in agony as one of the bolts smashed into its side, exploding and throwing green fire across its body. Stricken, the monster wheeled away, but it was in range of the other airships now. Missile after missile sped towards it, each hit resulting in an explosion that cast devouring green flames across its scaly body. Flesh dripped from the beast in a fiery rain as the ghastly fire transformed it into a blazing effigy. Like a falling star, the flaming beast plummeted to earth.

So too did the wounded King Snorri. As more gas fled its air-bag, the ship sank through the sky. Two of the other airships followed it, striving to guard their comrades against the threat posed by the remaining dragons.

It wasn’t the other dragons that brought destruction upon the immense skryzan-harbark. It was the blazing carcass of the dragon the dawi had already slain. As the beast hurtled towards the ground, it fell past King Snorri’s air-bag. Some of the burning flesh dripping from the reptile splashed across the side of the ship.

The next instant, it seemed to Rundin that the entire world shook. There was a roar like the bellow of a dying god, a sound of such booming malignance that the dwarf felt his teeth shiver in his jaw. A burst of light, more tremendous than the sun, seared his vision, leaving him blinking and cursing. Rubbing at his eyes, he forced himself to look skywards.

Through the red haze of his vision, Rundin could see the burning carcass of King Snorri slam against the ground. The wondrous ship was nothing but a charred frame that spilled across the plain. Its air-bag was utterly obliterated, transformed into a billowing cloud of fire that blossomed like the petals of some abominable flower. The petals caught the two airships that had tried to protect the stricken King Snorri. Green light burst across their decks as the blazing cloud engulfed them. In the blink of an eye, the vessels that had come to King Snorri’s aid were crashing downwards too. Their air-bags split as they struck, the gas within jetting forth, igniting as it came into contact with the fires all around it.

‘Valaya’s Mercy!’ Furgil wailed. Rundin wondered if even an ancestor god was equal to the destruction they now witnessed.

The burning gas rolled across the plain like some hellish fog, blasting the land black. One of the columns of warriors from Kazad Kro was caught in the conflagration, reduced to ash and shadow in an instant. Then the fiery blast crashed against the walls of Kazad Mingol. Stone melted like wax; bronze gates and iron shutters evaporated. The dwarfs within King Orrik’s halls didn’t even have time to scream before the annihilating wave washed over them.

Tears were in Rundin’s eyes. Tears for the slaughtered dwarfs of Kazad Mingol. Tears for the massacred warriors of Kazad Kro. Tears for the magnificent airships and the holocaust that had consumed them.

There would be a reckoning for this. Rundin swore by the rage of Grimnir himself that the elgi would be made to atone for this atrocity. ‘By the blood of my ancestors, the tall-ears will pay!’ he roared. Around him, the stunned warriors of Kazad Kro muttered similar oaths.

It was Furgil who drew their attention away from the burning earth and back to the sky. ‘One of the drakk,’ he shouted.

Indeed, one of the dragons, perhaps as stunned and confused by the explosion as the dwarfs, was soaring above the devastation. Its flight kept it from the three airships that had been away to the flank of Kazad Mingol, but not beyond the range of the last of King Snorri’s companions.

Nadri’s Retribution, Rundin read in runes upon the ship’s hull. The skryzan-harbark was away to the dragon’s flank when her crew loosed its missiles at the wyrm. Staggered by the conflagration, shocked by the sudden annihilation of half their fleet, the aim of the artillerists wasn’t precise. Only one of the bolts struck the drakk, a glancing shot that exploded against the beast’s wing. Rundin saw the injured wyrm swing away, then start to slip from the sky as the green fire gnawed through its leathery pinion.

‘They’re leaving!’ one of Rundin’s warriors cried out. It was true. No doubt stunned and horrified by the destruction they had inadvertently wrought, the airships were in retreat, withdrawing back towards the south and the mountain holds. The elgi and their dragons were likewise gone, driven off by the ferocious display. Only the injured wyrm remained, slamming into the burning ground.

‘Then let’s finish the job they started,’ Rundin snarled, hands tightening about the haft of his axe. Furgil gave his friend a grim nod. The faces of the skarrenawi warriors were no less fierce.

‘Khazuk!’ they cried as they hurried after Rundin onto the hellish plain.

There was a dragon that needed killing.

The wyrm was a grisly sight when the dwarfs reached it. The fire from the airship’s bolt had scorched its left wing clear to the bone, and shreds of leather and sinew flapped as the beast thrashed and flailed. Splashes of green flame continued to smoulder against its side, gnawing at its thick scales like acid. Sluggish reptilian blood oozed from dozens of wounds, sizzling as it dripped onto the blackened earth. The elgi rider slumped in his saddle, either stunned or slain by the drakk’s travails.

Once the dragon would have been an awesome, even terrifying sight. Over sixty feet long from its fanged snout to the end of its bifurcated tail, clothed in dark scales as thick as armour plate, sword-like claws tipping each of its talons. It was the sort of beast that crawled through the oldest legends, dared the boldest heroes. It was a monster birthed in the epic sagas of the most ancient days.

Now it was neither awesome nor terrible to Rundin and the dwarfs who followed him. It was nothing but a vessel into which to pour their hate and fury, an enemy to be destroyed as the first small measure of the debt they would claim from the elves.

‘Khazuk!’ Rundin shouted as he charged across the smouldering ground. Soot covered his armour, the exposed flesh of his face and hands was blistered and raw, every breath he drew scorched his throat, but his hate would not be denied. This wyrm would die and it would die by his axe.

Even through its agony, the dragon sensed Rundin. It reared back, its jaws gaping wide. Rundin flung himself flat as the drakk exhaled a gout of fire. The stink of charred flesh, the screams of burning dwarfs smashed against his senses. Then he was up again, swinging his axe, flinging himself at the monster.

Rundin’s axe slashed deep into the beast’s jaw, ripping away a great flap of scaly flesh. Reeking reptilian blood gushed down his arms as he worried the blade against the dragon’s jawbone. Wailing in pain, the drakk lurched back, throwing its head high and dragging the dwarf after it. Rundin found himself suspended in midair for a moment, then his blood-slick hands lost their grip on the axe embedded in the brute’s jaw. Howling in protest, he crashed to the ground.

Rundin scrambled as the dragon brought one of its huge claws stamping down, trying to crush him beneath its foot as he might have crushed a bug. He could see the elf rider, aware now of his peril, trying to direct the monster. For an instant, the eyes of dwarf and elf locked. He knew well the look in the eyes of his foe, that expression of hate so immense it transcended the urge to live. It was the gaze of the warrior who doesn’t expect to survive the battle but asks only that he send his enemy into the shadows first.

Before the elf could goad his dragon back to the attack, he was in turn attacked. A hand axe slammed into the rider’s side, shearing through the singed ruin of his cloak and glancing from the charred mail beneath. Outrage flared across the elf’s lean features. He swiped his hand through the air. In response, the dragon swung out with its claw, swatting the lone dwarf who had hurled the axe at its rider. The strike threw the dwarf through the air, sending him tumbling across the smouldering ground in a tangle of crushed armour and broken bone.

Something inside Rundin shattered as he watched the dwarf who had saved him die. It was the last gesture of friendship Furgil would ever make. There was nothing he could ever do to make amends to the ranger. All that was left was the honour of avenging his sacrifice.

Uttering a howl more bestial than the dragon’s own roar, Rundin leapt at the monster. He caught hold of the reptile’s horned snout, swinging himself onto the top of its muzzle. The dragon whipped its head back and forth, trying to throw the dwarf loose, but Rundin only tightened his hold, smashing one of his boots into the beast’s nostril and digging his foot into the opening. Other skarrenawi were attacking the monster now, running at it from every quarter, hacking at it with their axes, bashing it with their hammers and mauls. A particularly telling strike against its burning side caused the dragon to forget the dwarf clinging to its snout for a moment. As it turned to deal with that enemy, Rundin seized the opportunity to reach down and rip his axe clear from its jaw.

The dragon reared back, hissing in pain as Rundin freed his weapon. While it was still shrieking, he brought the axe slashing across its eye. Muck spilled from the stricken orb, ribbons of jelly clinging to the head of Rundin’s axe. He pulled back for another blow.

In that instant, Rundin felt his shoulder explode in pain. He looked over to see the elf standing on the dragon’s snout, his sword piercing the dwarf’s flesh. There was such a look of murderous fury in the elf’s eyes as Rundin had never seen before. As he met that gaze, however, he noticed the blood streaming from the rider’s left eye, the same eye as his dragon.

A cruel smile crept beneath Rundin’s beard. Maybe he could use whatever magic bound elf to dragon. Viciously, he kicked out with his foot, feeling something snap inside the drakk’s nose. The elf lurched back in sudden pain, his hand flying to his own nose.

An instant’s distraction was all Rundin needed. As the elf reeled, he swung out with his axe, chopping through his enemy’s sword arm. The mutilated elf screamed as his body hurtled earthwards. The empathic bond between him and the dragon caused the beast to rise up, shrieking anew in its agony.

Rundin held tight, watching as the elf was crushed as the dragon came slamming back down. The beast shrieked again as its master was pulverised beneath its weight. The dwarf dug his foot into the brute’s nose again and glared into its eye.

‘You’ll join your master soon enough,’ he snarled at the beast. Glancing down at Furgil’s shattered body, Rundin released his hold on the dragon’s horn. Both hands gripping his axe, the full weight and momentum of his armoured body behind the blow, he brought his blade slamming down between the dragon’s eyes.

The dwarf was sent flying as the dragon bucked beneath him. He slammed onto his back a dozen yards away. He could feel the ground shudder as the dragon started after him. The reptile couldn’t close the distance, however, before its great bulk slumped against the earth. Blood and brains gushed from the gash in its skull, oozing around the dwarf axe driven into its head.

Rundin glared at the dead monster. Only dimly did he hear the jubilant cheers of his surviving warriors. It was no mean feat to slay a dragon, much less one of the terrible beasts the elgi had brought from across the sea.

To Rundin, however, it was a hollow triumph. It didn’t make up for all the dwarf lives he had seen extinguished this day. It didn’t make up for Furgil. It would take much more blood – both elgi and drakk – to fill that emptiness.

If the War of Vengeance were to last another hundred years, Rundin didn’t think he could ever spill enough blood to balance the scales.

CHAPTER TWO

The Legacy of Princes
237th year of the reign of Caledor II

What is the secret?

That question had long plagued Thoriol of Tor Caled. It had haunted his thoughts and dreams for years, feeding his feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt. He’d tried to escape – how he had tried. He’d embraced the anonymity of a simple archer, fled across the great ocean to the distant colonies of Elthin Arvan in a fruitless quest for peace.

Destiny was not so easily cheated. The blood of his line seemed to call out to its own. When he’d reached Tor Alessi, his father was already there. Almost alone among the asur nobility, Prince Imladrik had tried one last time to end the war between elves and dwarfs. Morgrim Bargrum and his army wouldn’t be dissuaded. After a few days, the dwarfs laid siege to the city.

Unknown to his father, Thoriol had been one of the warriors defending the walls of Tor Alessi. When the dwarfs smashed their way through, Thoriol had been wounded trying to hold the breach. But for his father, he knew he would have died like so many others. It was Imladrik who’d commanded the best healers and mages in Tor Alessi to attend his son’s injuries. Thoriol still felt the sting of shame at such preferential treatment.

Resentment had coloured his last meeting with his father. That memory stabbed deep into Thoriol’s heart. While recovering from his wounds in the tower Imladrik had spoken with him. At the time, Thoriol had refused to listen, refused to understand. Imladrik’s fears about Tor Caled, about the future of their line, had rung hollow to him. All of Imladrik’s talk of duty and the obligation of noble heritage had seemed meaningless. Thoriol could see only the advantages and privilege of his highborn status, things he felt himself unworthy of.

Thoriol looked about the room in which he sat, studying the finery of the appointments. Gold and jewels glistened at him from every quarter, set into the delicate woodwork that edged each window and door, inlaid into the feet of silk-cushioned divans and satin-lined footstools. Decanters of wine rested atop a silver-armed bar cabinet, each fashioned from diamond, pearl and ruby. Lush rugs were spread across the floor, their intricate designs woven by master artisans in Eataine employing thread from lands beyond the Capes of Dusk and Dawn. Nowhere in all of Kor Evril was there such finery as that within the Dragontamer’s halls.

‘Dragontamer.’ Thoriol whispered the word, letting it fall like bitter venom from his tongue. His ancestor had been the Dragontamer, mighty Caledor himself, who roused the dragons and forged the alliance between drake and asur. That talent had passed to Imladrik, the one the dragons called kalamn-talaen: the little lord. The one the asur had titled Master of Dragons.

How desperately his father had hoped the same affinity coursed through Thoriol’s veins. The last time he had been in Kor Evril it had been to accompany Imladrik into the Dragonspine, to attend the awakening of one of the drakes. Thoriol had tried to commune with the dragon as she took wing, tried to employ the ancient dragonsong to establish harmony between their minds. For a brief moment he had dared to share his father’s hopes. When the connection failed to manifest, when the dragon rejected his communion, Thoriol had seen the disappointment in his father’s eyes. In that instant, he knew there was nothing he could ever do to live up to his legacy.

Now the Master of Dragons was gone, killed by Morgrim Bargrum, the same warlord whose army had besieged Tor Alessi and whose warriors had nearly slain Thoriol. For this feat, Thoriol understood that the dwarfs had bestowed upon Morgrim the title ‘Elfdoom’.

The desire to avenge his father was a cold fire deep within Thoriol’s heart, tempered only by the understanding that he had neither the skills nor resources to bring about such a reckoning. He was the heir of his father’s house, but that was all. He was no great leader of armies. He was no dragon rider. Even the scholarly skills and political acuity of his mother, Yethanial, were beyond him.

The young asur prince looked longingly at the decanters of wine. There was solace there, the peace of forgetfulness and oblivion, if only for a few hours. He shook his head, well aware of how hollow such an escape was. The bottle offered only the illusion of peace, a dull delusion to take the edge from a painful reality. He would find no answers there, only a deeper kind of shame.

A sharp knock on the chamber door drew Thoriol’s eyes away from the bar cabinet. A steward appointed in the livery of Tor Caled appeared as the door swung inwards. In a crisp, sharp voice, the servant announced the elf who followed behind him. ‘Lord Caradryel of House Reveniol.’

The visitor was a tall, blond-haired highborn, his features handsome but edged with a determination that bespoke either great boldness or great pride. Over the past few years, Thoriol had come to appreciate that Caradryel possessed both qualities in abundance. The prince had taken service with Yethanial, acting as her agent among the great houses of Ulthuan. Sometimes his duties extended as high as the court of Caledor II or as low as the seclusion of the king’s nephew.

‘My Lord Thoriol,’ Caradryel greeted the prince with a courtly bow. As he straightened, he passed a gloved hand across the breast of his tunic, smoothing the rumpled silk.

‘My Lord Caradryel,’ Thoriol replied with a modicum of civility. Despite the trust his mother had invested in the silver-tongued dignitary, Thoriol couldn’t shake his dislike of the highborn. The two of them couldn’t be more dissimilar. Thoriol found the privileges of nobility something of an embarrassment. Caradryel revelled in them, savouring each moment, relishing all the ornamental foolishness of courtly courtesy and noble tradition. They were like the moons – Thoriol dark and brooding, Caradryel bright and brilliant.

‘It is always an honour to be received with such munificence in Kor Evril,’ Caradryel said as the steward closed the door behind him.

Thoriol arched an eyebrow at his visitor’s remark. ‘I extend no more courtesy to you than I would any other guest.’

‘I am certain of that,’ Caradryel said. He plucked at the sleeve of his tunic. ‘You know, I have an entire wardrobe devoted solely to these visits.’

‘Indeed?’ Thoriol sank down in one of the divans and waved his guest to seat himself. ‘I was unaware that you anticipated your time here with such ardour.’

Caradryel glanced around for a moment, then took a chair that afforded him a view of both the prince and a window looking out upon the mountains. ‘There is a distinct atmosphere about this place that never quite abandons a garment once it has been exposed to it.’ He smiled and bowed his head in apology. ‘It isn’t every circumstance where it is appropriate to go about smelling like dragon.’

‘You should discuss your wardrobe with my mother,’ Thoriol suggested. ‘I am sure she has other errands she could entrust you with.’

Caradryel maintained an attitude of affability, letting the slight slide off him with the practised indulgence of a diplomat. Instead, he simply smiled and raised a hand to his neck. ‘I fear I am not here as an agent of Lady Yethanial,’ he apologised. Gingerly, he lifted a gold necklace from beneath his tunic. Fastened to the chain was a ring of emerald and diamond. Thoriol’s eyes fastened upon the ring, gazing on it for an instant in undisguised shock.

‘This visit is at the request of King Caledor II,’ Caradryel announced. He allowed Thoriol a moment to recover from his surprise at seeing the royal signet. ‘I was summoned to the Phoenix Tower three days ago during a visit to Lothern. The king, your uncle, has expressed his desire that you should join his court.’ Caradryel raised his eyes to the ceiling, as though trying to recall the king’s words from memory, though Thoriol was certain they were as vibrant in the diplomat’s mind as though set there in letters of fire. ‘He feels that you have spent too much time pining away in the Dragonspine. He believes that your place is with him.’

A scowl of resentment crept onto Thoriol’s face. ‘Where he can better keep his eye on me,’ he growled. For a long time there had been friction between the king and Imladrik, suspicions that the younger brother desired the crown of the elder. Yethanial believed such suspicions had been behind the king’s command that Imladrik return to the colonies – an order that had ultimately resulted in his father’s death.

Caradryel shook his head. ‘I know you don’t care for me. The reasons why don’t matter. I know you believe me to be duplicitous and opportunistic. Perhaps such judgement isn’t entirely baseless. I have become so accustomed to courtly intrigue that I suppose it has seeped into my very bones. Your father’s strength was his ability to command. Your mother’s lies in her knowledge of lore and history. My strength is bound up in empty flattery and courtly lies. I would ask that you accept that I’m quite talented in my arena.’

‘I will concede that you are well versed in intrigue,’ Thoriol said, wondering what point Caradryel was trying to make.

‘Then perhaps you will also understand when I say to you that there are few asur who can deceive me,’ Caradryel said. ‘Something, some gesture or word, something said or unsaid, will always suggest their true motivations. I tell you now, Thoriol of Tor Caled, it isn’t suspicion behind the king’s request. If Caledor was suspicious of you, he wouldn’t send me in secret to ask you to join him. He would do as he did when he sent your father away. He would come to Kor Evril with his full entourage. He wouldn’t ask in secret, he would command it in public.’

‘He is the king,’ Thoriol said. ‘He can command whatever he wishes. However misguided or foolish.’

Caradryel grimaced at those last words. They were imprudent, even in a place like Kor Evril. ‘The wisdom or folly of the king is a subject perhaps best left undiscussed for the moment. You could even say that past mistakes have laid the seeds for future opportunity.’

Thoriol studied Caradryel’s face, wondering if the glimmer he saw in the highborn’s eyes was genuine or another pretence. ‘He is unfit to be king.’ They were words that seemed to roll like thunder through the room.

‘Today he is our king,’ Caradryel cautioned. He pointed to the band of white cloth bound about Thoriol’s neck, a mark of mourning he still wore years after his father’s death. ‘When he appears in public, the king shines with splendour. I have seen him in private, however, and I tell you he wears white when he is alone. He mourns the death of his brother in his fashion. I think he questions the decisions that killed your father and the doubts that brought about those decisions.

‘The king has no issue,’ Caradryel stated. ‘Your father’s death, I think, has made Caledor think upon his own mortality. He worries about the legacy he will leave behind. He wonders about the future of the House of Tor Caled. You are that future. That is why the king asks you to join him.’

‘He cared little enough when my father was alive,’ Thoriol scoffed. ‘What does he expect from me now? What does the king expect me to say that will ease his guilt?’

Caradryel rose from his chair. The diplomatic mask fell away and his face became stern. ‘Say nothing,’ he warned. ‘Listen. Watch. You are being handed an opportunity that is so momentous it terrifies me. You will be ushered into the inner circle of the Phoenix King. You will be privy to his innermost councils, his most private discussions. Blood of Asuryan, can you not understand? He intends to groom you as his heir!’

Thoriol clenched his fist, enraged by the very suggestion. Again, it was the accident of blood not the reward of achievement that was dictating his life. ‘I am my father’s son,’ he snarled.

‘Then do what your father tried so hard to do,’ Caradryel said. ‘Use your influence with the king to save Ulthuan.’

‘I have no influence with the king,’ Thoriol said.

Caradryel’s voice dropped into a warning whisper. ‘Then bide your time until you do.’

Even in the quiet solitude of Valaya’s temple, the brooding majesty of Karaz-a-Karak made itself felt. It was a climate, an atmosphere all to itself, a sense of ancient honour and monumental strength that fired the blood and made the heart of any dwarf swell with pride.

At the moment, Morgrim was too discomfited to think about pride and magnificence, even that of Karaz-a-Karak. He grimaced behind his beard as a sharp pain throbbed through his body. Inwardly he berated himself for such a display of weakness. He was the great hero of the Karaz Ankor, Morgrim Bargrum, Elgidum, Imladrikbane. The slaying of the elf prince was a feat that had fired the heart of all the dawi, from Kraka Drak in the far north to Karak Hirn in the west. Through the many years since the killing of Snorri Halfhand by the elf king, the dwarfs had sought retribution against their foe. They’d laid siege to Tor Alessi four times, razed Kor Vanaeth and Oeragor, sacked Athel Numiel, vanquished armies of elves, seized mounds of treasure. None of it had gone so much as an inch towards settling the grudgement levelled against the asur.

Killing Imladrik was different. The elves had killed the son of High King Gotrek. Now the dwarfs had killed the brother of Phoenix King Caledor II. It wasn’t enough to satisfy the call for vengeance, but it was a start, an omen that inspired the whole of the Karaz Ankor. Even after the conflagration that had consumed Kazad Mingol and seen the destruction of Barak Varr’s skryzan-harbark, the dawi were still emboldened by what Morgrim had done.

‘The wound still pains you?’

Morgrim forced a smile onto his face and started to deny the hurt in his side. One look into the anxious features of High Priestess Elmendrin made him appreciate the futility of such a denial. He might be able to hide his pain from most but there was no fooling a priestess of Valaya.

‘When there’s a wind from the north, it starts to trouble me,’ Morgrim confessed. A gruff laugh rumbled through his broad frame. ‘Even in the depths of the Ungdrin Ankor, it troubles me when the wind comes down from the north. Filthy elf magic.’

Morgrim sat upon a stone bench, stripped to the waist so that the priestess might inspect the scar running across his ribs. If a hot poker had been pressed to his hide, he didn’t think it could leave a more grisly brand. It was a strange fact that the blow which had inflicted the wound had failed to penetrate the heavy armour he had been wearing. Then again, the elves were a race saturated in magic and sorcery. It only followed that a great leader like Imladrik would have borne a blade with some sort of dire enchantment upon it.

More evidence, as though any were needed, of elven perfidy. Imladrik had been as close to the dawi as any of his breed. He’d known precisely what to say, what to do, to stir doubt in Morgrim’s heart. Almost, the elf lord’s words had made Morgrim’s resolve falter, made him question the righteousness of their war. Duplicitous talk of renegade elgi being responsible for the strife between their peoples! Was it not the elf king himself who had commanded the humiliation of the ambassadors sent to Ulthuan? Was it some mythical druchii who slew Snorri and cut the hand from his corpse?

A low grunt of pain fell from Morgrim’s lips as Elmendrin’s fingers kneaded his scarred flesh, working the healing salve into his old wound.

‘Relax, Ironbeard,’ the priestess told him. ‘You must rest and give yourself time to heal.’

Coming from anyone else, the advice would have made him laugh. Time to heal? Every hour he spent convalescing in the halls of Karaz-a-Karak was almost as torturous as the wound itself. Years he had spent trying to recover his strength. Years when he should have been out there, leading the dawi in battle. His name had become a rallying cry for the dwarfs, yet the warrior who bore it was left behind in the vaults of the High King. It was left to others to march against the elves. King Thagdor and King Varnuf, their warriors crashing against the walls of Tor Lithanel and Sith Rionnasc. The army of King Bagrik striving to pierce the defences of Athel Toralien. The great thane Brok Stonefist of Karak Azul leading his troops through forgotten branches of the Ungdrin Ankor to attack the enemy where they least expected battle.

Battle! The entire land gripped by war and Morgrim was condemned to watch from the sidelines. Until he was fit again, High King Gotrek had forbidden him to return to the field. A living hero was what the dwarfs needed right now, not yet another fallen lord to avenge. Much as he chafed under his king’s command, Morgrim recognised the wisdom of it. Killing him would embolden the elgi at a time when they were being pressed on every front. The elves needed a victory to rally them, something to dull the pain of Imladrik’s death and the loss of Oeragor.

Morgrim rested his hand on Elmendrin’s shoulder. ‘I think I understand now the frustration you must endure.’

‘No,’ she reproached him, ‘you cannot begin to understand. You endure through the hope that your hurt will ease and you will return to the battle. You anticipate taking up your axe and again seeking retribution from the enemy.’

‘I do,’ Morgrim admitted. ‘Azdrakghar hungers for the blood of the elgi and their beasts.’ He clenched his fist as he remembered the sight of the elven dragon riders burning his army before the walls of Tor Alessi. The runes had awoken in that moment of rage. The years since had not diminished their ire. ‘I would feed my axe well,’ he vowed.

Elmendrin dipped her hand into the pot of salve, rubbing more of the ointment into his flesh. ‘Such a path is denied to me. However deeply I would drink from the cup of vengeance, I cannot. Even the desire to do so does me shame.’

‘You have more cause than most to bring grudge against the elgi,’ Morgrim declared. ‘Your brother Forek unspeakably disgraced by their king. My cousin Snorri…’

Morgrim felt the tremble that passed through Elmendrin’s hand. At once he regretted his words. He knew how close she had been to Snorri. The prince had courted her incessantly, finding any excuse to visit the Temple of Valaya. Sometimes Morgrim had wondered if Snorri’s obsession with Elmendrin had played a part in making him so impulsive and reckless. The prince had been brave, but it had been a foolish sort of bravery, the senseless bravado of pride and arrogance. Snorri had often confessed his intention to make Elmendrin his bride, but Morgrim was never sure how much of that desire stemmed from genuine love and how much was simply the knowledge that a priestess was forbidden even to the High King’s son.

Looking at Elmendrin now, Morgrim appreciated that whatever Snorri’s motivations, the priestess had cared for him. There was such a deep pain in her eyes that he had to hurriedly turn his head, unwilling to shame her by gazing on her sorrow.

‘I did not turn from my vows when he was alive,’ Elmendrin whispered, her voice so low that Morgrim was uncertain if he was even meant to hear her words. ‘How can I break them now that he is gone? Revenge is something I must leave to others.’

Morgrim closed his hand around her own, squeezing her fingers. ‘By Grungni, there will be a reckoning. If we must sail to Ulthuan and drag the elf king from his perfumed throne, he will pay for what has been done.’

The priestess drew her hand away. Some of the sadness left her eyes as she looked at the determination in Morgrim’s face. ‘You do his memory honour,’ she said. ‘You restored his hand to his tomb. Soon you will restore honour to his spirit.’

Morgrim felt his stomach broil at the mention of Snorri’s hand. The hand had been disfigured long ago, bestowing on the prince the title of ‘Halfhand’. When the elf king slew Snorri, the villain had contemptuously cut the hand from the corpse and taken it back to his palace as a trophy. Its return to the dwarfs had little to do with Morgrim. It had been restored by Imladrik, an act of contrition on his part for the crimes of his king. Alone of the elf lords, Imladrik had understood what Snorri’s mutilation meant and had made the effort to undo such evil.

That was the warrior Morgrim had slain, the hero whose brand he now wore on his flesh.

Elmendrin set the lid back onto the pot of salve. She gathered up the remaining ointments and unguents she had previously applied and replaced them on the wutroth tray. The old poultice she’d removed from Morgrim’s side was carefully folded into a tiny square of soiled cloth. Later it would be burned in ceremonial gratitude to Valaya.

‘Do I get another of those?’ Morgrim asked.

‘Not for a few days. The salve must be allowed to work on its own,’ Elmendrin answered. A worried look crept onto her face. ‘You have visitors,’ she said.

Morgrim slipped down from the bench, glancing around for his shirt. ‘What?’ he barked angrily before remembering where he was and to whom he spoke. He’d been in the hospice for several hours and Elmendrin had never left him. Any visitant would have been cooling his heels for a long time if he’d arrived before the priestess began her ministrations. ‘Who is it?’ he said, trying to make his voice more respectful than demanding.

‘Morek Furrowbrow and… a steelbeard,’ Elmendrin said. She didn’t look at him as she took up the tray.

Morgrim was barely able to contain himself. Morek Furrowbrow! She’d kept a runelord waiting. Even a king didn’t ask a runelord to wait. Before his blood could boil over completely, he considered the rest of her words. Morek and a steelbeard. There was only one steelbeard who would be accompanying the runelord. Anger drained from Morgrim in a surge of sympathy. Years had passed, but Elmendrin was still struggling to accept the dishonour inflicted upon her brother.

After Elmendrin withdrew, a temple acolyte conducted Morgrim’s visitors to him. Morek looked thinner than the last time Morgrim had seen him, with more wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and a bit more silver in his hair. The runelord bore his staff, a tall rod of wutroth ringed in bands of iron and copper, and topped with a stone carving of an anvil. Little slivers of light crackled about it every time he brought the steel-tipped stem into contact with the floor.

The dwarf accompanying Morek wore full armour, his face locked inside an enclosed helm of steel. The mask of the helm was cast in the shape of an enraged ancestor, lips curled back in an eternal snarl. A great curtain of gold chains dripped from the mask, falling across the dwarf’s armoured chest in a gleaming cascade. With each step he took, a shiver passed through the golden beard, playing upon the subtle differences of hue between each link. The beard had been fashioned from gold gifted by the kings of each hold in the Karaz Ankor, save the lost southern hold of Karak Zorn. Even the skarrenawi kings had sent gifts, all except their greedy ‘High King’ Skarnag Grum. It was a testament to the great insult the elves had inflicted that even the hill dwarfs felt offended by the disgrace suffered by the steelbeards.

Steelbeards. It was a name bestowed upon the dawi who had been abused in the elf king’s court. The name referred not to the metal beards that fell from their masks, but to the grim axes they carried, axes that had been forged to shear elves even more closely than those who bore them had been shorn. The runes inscribed into those axes were the most abominable ever pressed into steel, murderous symbols of such potency that the runesmiths had refused to inscribe them for mere grobi, urk and drakk. It had taken the insult of elves to rouse such a fury in the runesmiths and even then there were many who had demurred about their use. Karaz-a-Karak’s own High Runelord Ranuld Silverthumb had been one of those who warned against such weapons, proclaiming them to be a curse against not the elgi but the dawi themselves. Ranuld had withdrawn from public view shortly after. Even his apprentice Morek hadn’t seen him in over a year.

Morek bowed as he came towards Morgrim. The steelbeard made no such concession. By command of High King Gotrek, the steelbeards were no longer under the authority of anyone and need acknowledge neither king nor thane. That he was here at all was a greater show of respect to Morgrim than the most abject genuflection.

‘Forgive my absence, lord,’ Morek said. ‘I have been away.’

‘Looking for more “old magic” for your master?’ Morgrim asked. The question put him in mind of that chance meeting with Ranuld deep in the ruins of Karak Krum. The runelord had been searching for what he called ‘old magic’ at the time. Perhaps distracted by his hunt, Ranuld had muttered a prophecy to Morgrim and Snorri about a future king who would slay the dragon. That prophecy had played no small part in leading Snorri to his death. Many times Morgrim had wondered if he could dare to level a grudge against the runelord for that.

Morek ran his hand along the side of his staff. ‘I have been visiting the runelords of the Burudin on behalf of my master. After the murder of Agrin Fireheart, the kings are loath to allow the Burudin to stray far from their holds.’ An amused cough rumbled through the dwarf. ‘Less revered runesmiths like myself are much more expendable.’

‘Not to me,’ Morgrim said. ‘You stood by me at the Siege of Tor Alessi and the Cleansing of Oeragor. I do not forget such loyalty.’

‘It is a curious reward you offer in return,’ Morek mused, his thumb rubbing one of the iron bands circling his staff. ‘Indeed, I am uncertain if it is honour or insult.’

Morgrim looked over at the steelbeard. ‘You have explained fully what I want and why?’ The steelbeard nodded by way of answer. They were dwarfs of few words, but when they did speak, even kings listened.

‘Forek has explained,’ the runelord said. ‘Most eloquently,’ he added with a touch of sadness. Before his humiliation, Forek Grimbok had been the High King’s reckoner, his most skilled diplomat and ambassador. ‘What I do not know is if what you ask is wisdom or folly.’

Morgrim slapped his hand against his scarred side. ‘It’s a good blade. Every morning when I wake up, the first thing I remember is how sharp its bite is.’

‘Elgi sorcery,’ Morek cautioned. ‘They are a fearsome people with peculiar ideas about magic and its use. The wise course is to shun their enchantments.’ He shook his head. ‘No, my lord, if you wish my advice, I tell you to cast the shards into the deepest part of the Black Water and forget it.’

‘Is what I ask impossible, then?’ Morgrim asked.

Morek smiled and tapped his runestaff on the floor, setting little wisps of light crackling across the metal bands. ‘You’ll not twist my beard by playing against my pride. Reforging an elven blade is something beyond any swordsmith, but not impossible for a runesmith.’ He nodded towards Forek. ‘You’ve even gone so far as to impress the only dawi in the whole of the Karaz Ankor who knows elgi letters well enough to help in the work. Why do you really want this? You say as a symbol of your victory over the elgi, but you yourself are already a symbol of that victory.’

‘And that is the problem,’ Morgrim said. ‘I have become too important as a symbol. High King Gotrek is reluctant to send me into battle now. He worries what my death would do to the war.’ He shook his fists in frustration. ‘I can’t go on like this, locked away like some treasure too precious to spend. Our people are out there fighting! I need to be with them.’

‘You think the captured blade of an elgi lord will replace you in the hearts of the dawi? You are Elgidum, the great hope of our people. No enemy’s sword will fire their spirits as you have,’ Morek reproved him.

‘It isn’t our people I need to inspire,’ Morgrim confessed. He looked over at Forek. ‘Our people have enough cause to fight. It is the High King whose spirit I need to inspire.’

Morek frowned. ‘The High King has greater cause for grudgement than any of us. He still wears beads of onyx in his beard and stains his cheeks with ash in mourning. Entire vaults in the royal treasury have been emptied to pay for the armies he has set against the elgi.’

‘The king fights from sorrow and revenge,’ Morgrim said. ‘That would be enough for you or I or Forek, but he needs more than that. He fears for the kingdom, fears for the future of the dawi. He needs to fight with hope in a victory worth winning.’

‘An elf sword will do all that?’ Morek scoffed.

‘No,’ Morgrim said. ‘But it will remind him of what I have overcome. Who I have overcome. It will remind him of the warrior who stays sheathed in his halls.’

‘Then where will he find this hope you say he needs?’ the runelord wondered.

Morgrim’s eyes became like chips of granite. ‘Let the king send me back into battle, and the victories I bring him will give him all the hope he needs. Reforge Bitter-Blade for me. Let me carry the elf sword to Gotrek’s throne and show him that I have already vanquished the best the elgi have to send against us.’

Lord Ilendril scowled as he cast his gaze across the bleak shoreline of sand and scrub. Away across the western horizon, the opposite shore rose, much nearer than the elf lord found comfortable. The Iron Gulf wasn’t exactly friendly waters for an elven galley like the Cormorant. When he looked at the ship’s captain from the corner of his eye, he could see the trepidation there. The captain knew better than to voice such concerns to a highborn like Ilendril, of course. It made things so much easier when a peasant knew his place. It wasn’t the captain’s business to wonder if the object of this voyage was worth the dangers it entailed. It was simply his duty to obey.

Dismissing the captain’s worries from his thoughts, Ilendril studied the barren shore, searching for whatever markers might yet remain of Feillas, the tiny port that had once been the gateway to the city of Oeragor. Even before the fall of Oeragor, Feillas had been destroyed by dwarf warships, annihilated a few years after the Phoenix King struck down a dwarfish prince in single combat.

‘There is a ship to starboard.’ The words were but a whisper, but they struck Ilendril like a lash. He spun around, forgetting for an instant the detached poise demanded of a highborn. There was no one near him on the deck, no one close enough to whisper in his ear. That left only one possibility. Regaining his composure, he walked across the deck to where a lone elf leaned against the starboard rail.

‘Ashelir,’ the elf lord said, studying the cloaked figure. Not for the first time Ilendril appreciated why the crew shunned their passenger. The taint of Nagarythe was something unmistakable, a coldness of bearing, a practised furtiveness that coloured the elf’s every motion. The steel blades that hung from his broad belt had been forged in Nagarythe. His crescent-headed arrows had been fletched with feathers from Nagarythe’s fisher-hawks. His grey cloak, seeming to shift between hues with each breath, was wrapped in the magics of Nagarythe. Nagarythe, the broken land that had spawned Malekith, the Witch King of Naggaroth.

There were few among the asur who tolerated the elves of Nagarythe, however loudly they declared their loyalty. For most, there was little difference between the shadow warriors and the druchii they fought. Ilendril, however, was more pragmatic. If there was one thing he could appreciate, it was the hate one could bear for his own people. In a way, it made Ashelir and himself kindred souls.

‘A dwarf ship,’ Ashelir said, his eyes still staring out across the sea. There was more than a little magic about the shadow warrior. He couldn’t work any mighty spells like the mages of Saphery, but he had abilities that strayed down arcane paths. The lineage of his bloodline strayed to sorcery – at least before the Sundering.

Blood will call to blood. It was an old parable, but one that Ilendril had invested a great deal of faith in.

‘They will find us?’ Ilendril asked.

Ashelir kept his face towards the horizon. ‘If we stay this course.’

‘We stay the course,’ Ilendril declared. He glanced back at the captain. It would be some minutes before the lookouts spotted the enemy ship. He could pass along Ashelir’s warning now, but to do so might cause the crew to decide that flight was the prudent course. Ilendril wouldn’t allow their timidity to waste his time and threaten his venture.

‘I’ll rouse Vithrein from his meditation,’ Ilendril said. ‘Keep your eyes on the enemy. Warn the captain just before his own spotters catch sight of it.’ It was an effort to keep his pace unhurried as he left Ashelir and made his way below deck. It took only a few moments to reach Vithrein’s cabin and rouse him from his trance. Ilendril only needed a single word to explain the situation to the other elf.

‘Dwarfs.’

The word caused Vithrein’s lean, pale features to slip into a grimace. An ugly light shone in the depths of his jade-green eyes. One swift motion brought him to the gem-crusted box lying upon its silken pillow. A gesture of his hand and the lid of the box spiralled open like the petals of a flower. Vithrein reached down and removed a long spur of what looked like charred bone. Ilendril knew the object was a piece of horn. More than that, he knew what manner of creature it belonged to.

As the two elves climbed back on deck, the frightened shouts of the crew struck their ears. The dwarf warship was a dark speck on the horizon. Ilendril felt his heart jump when he saw plumes of black smoke belch from the enemy ship. The dwarfs had spotted the Cormorant and were shovelling fuel into their engines.

‘My lord, the dwarfs have seen us!’ The Cormorant’s captain had the dignity not to outright beg as he called to Ilendril, but the highborn caught the note of entreaty in the peasant’s voice.

‘We cannot outrun them,’ Ilendril stated. ‘The open sea is behind us. Ahead of us is naught but the neck of a bottle with Barak Varr at the end.’ He turned towards the crew as they hurried to tack on more sail and cast stowage over the side. ‘By the grace of Mathlann, we are not fated to die in a mud-digger’s puddle. I did not bring you so far just so a bearded runt could brag about sinking us in some brewhall burrow. Behold the might of Tor Javril!’

As he spoke, Ilendril made a furtive wave of his hand to Vithrein. The mage sat down upon the rolling deck and brought the horn to his lips. No sound rose from the blackened spur – at least no sound that could be heard by elven ears. The melody Vithrein played was meant for something else.

Long minutes passed. With each breath the dwarf warship came steaming closer. The iron plating of its hull was distinct now, as were the grotesque battlemasks bolted to its sides. Ballistae mounted in the fore and aftcastles could be seen rotating on their mounts, being brought to bear upon the elf ship. Bearded warriors raised their axes and howled their savage war-cries.

The Cormorant’s captain came down from the foredeck, hurrying to Ilendril’s side. In his alarm, he almost forgot decorum and reached out for the highborn. At the last instant, he pulled back, remembering the insult his common fingers would inflict upon noble flesh. ‘My lord, we cannot fight them,’ he reported, as though Ilendril were ignorant of so obvious a fact.

‘We won’t have to,’ Ilendril said. Before the captain could question his meaning, the Cormorant was rocked by a series of unexpectedly savage waves. Sailors began shouting in shock, pointing at the water. Ilendril followed the captain to the side. Together they watched as a massive shape undulated through the waves, keeping itself just beneath the surface. Great rolls of azure and white, slithering through the water like some vast serpent. Ilendril imagined the captain would be upset if he knew the beast had been following them ever since they’d left port in Ulthuan. Of course, watching the thing speed straight towards the dwarf warship made such deception perfectly justified.

The dwarf ship was still beyond the range of its ballistae when the merwyrm rose from the depths, exploding from the waves with the violence of a water spout. In its first rush, the enormous sea serpent crumpled the vessel’s portside plating and smashed its forecastle bolt thrower into the sea. Dwarf warriors rushed at it with axe and hammer, but the great serpent twisted away. Rearing back, the merwyrm spilled itself across the deck, smashing dozens of dwarfs beneath its coils. The enormous head, more like that of a dragon than the bronze effigy mounted to the ship’s prow, snapped its jaws around the bolt thrower in the aftcastle, ripping it free in a shower of splinters and twisted metal.

Ilendril fought to remain composed as he watched the mighty merwyrm wreak destruction upon the dwarfs. Sometimes he glanced over at Vithrein blowing upon the horn, directing the mammoth reptile with his arcane melody. The focus and direction of an asur mind married to the elemental might of a sea serpent! If they weren’t such contemptible barbarians, he might even find it possible to feel pity for the dwarfs.

A primordial cry, half howl and half hiss, erupted from the merwyrm’s maw as its flippers swatted armoured dwarfs into the sea. The dwarfs sank like anchors as they struck the waves. Even as they vanished from sight, the serpent looped another coil of its sinuous body around the vessel. Tightening its hold, the merwyrm began to crush the stout warship.

The elf lord smiled. Vithrein’s magic had survived its first test but it would need to do much more before Ilendril was satisfied.

Much more indeed.

CHAPTER THREE

Elven Blades
239th year of the reign of Caledor II

She could almost see the hate boiling from her companions, like waves of heat rising from the desert. Every motion, every gesture, every breath was invested with the deepest loathing. It was a testament to how much they needed her that she was still alive. Once that need was gone, the only question would be which of them would strike first. Would it be Ashniel or Malchior? Which of her old acolytes was bold enough?

Drutheira gazed into the flames of the fire Malchior had kindled. The smoke rising from the fire had a bluish tinge, a little something extra for the benefit of the savages native to these forsaken wilds. Over the years enough of the skin-clad primitives had died by sorcery that the rest had learned to give the druchii a wide berth. The blue cast to the smoke would remind them that the sorcerers they feared were yet abroad in these lands.

Wastes, that was what they were: miserable, sun-bleached desolation as far as the eye could see. Even the chill frontiers of Naggaroth were preferable to this brown ruin of dead sand and leafless scrub. That there was life here at all was something Drutheira still found astonishing. Yet there was game enough to be had, fruit of a sort that could be harvested from the thorny scrub and scraggly trees. Somehow, even the packs of tribal humans managed to survive, persisting in lands neither dwarf nor goblin saw fit to inhabit.

‘Do you wonder how the war fares?’ Malchior asked. The sorcerer sat across from Drutheira, roasting some small creature over the flames. She couldn’t be certain if it was a lizard or a rat. She was more worried that her old acolyte was eavesdropping on her thoughts again. It was a bad habit he’d developed as soon as he figured out her powers were too weak to guard against his spying.

‘It is of small consequence to us,’ Drutheira said. ‘Whether it is the asur or the dawi who prevail, the victor will hardly welcome us.’

‘Perhaps we should try to contact Naggarond again?’ Ashniel’s voice carried an almost pathetic hopefulness. Drutheira could almost pity her, if any such emotion were still possible for a druchii. There had been a time when she’d considered Ashniel the more dangerous of her acolytes, more calculating and subtle than Malchior. She’d even been more capable in the black arts, possessing a greater affinity for the dark Wind of Dhar.

‘I think our king has heard all he wants from us,’ Malchior told Ashniel. His words weren’t merely blunt; they were deliberately cruel, punctuated by a sneer and a mocking laugh. He looked over at Drutheira. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘There is no room for weakness in Naggaroth,’ Drutheira declared. ‘Even if we were able to appeal to Malekith for help, the act itself would diminish us. Rivals and enemies would see us as easy prey. No, if we are to return, we must do so on our own.’

Malchior tore one of the charred legs from his meal and took an experimental bite of it. He frowned and thrust the carcass back into the fire. ‘So you have been saying. We’ve spent a long time waiting for you to recover your powers and show us the way. It would pain me to think all that time and effort had been wasted.’

Drutheira clamped down on the thoughts that formed in her mind. She’d allowed Malchior to pick too many secrets from her brain already. He couldn’t know the truth about her condition. Her link to Bloodfang had been crude and hasty, magic of necessity rather than caution. At the time she’d been arrogant enough to believe she was capable of wielding such power. Only now did she understand the true price she’d paid for her presumption. Alive, she’d poked and prodded Bloodfang’s mind, enslaving the beast to her will. That connection hadn’t been severed when the dragon was struck down by the asur mage Liandra and her drake. Even now she couldn’t break the connection. She could feel Bloodfang lying at the bottom of the sea, its scales rotting away, fish swimming between its bones, worms nibbling away at its flesh. The weight of the sea was constantly pressing down on her, making her head pound with sympathetic pressure. Her magic was yet bound to the dragon’s carcass, drawn out of her as though by some blood-sucking ghost.

As she watched Malchior, Drutheira saw the sudden change that came into his eyes. His lips spread in a malignant smile. At once, she knew he’d slipped through her defences and discovered the truth she’d tried to hold from him. ‘You disappoint me,’ he declared. ‘It seems we will have to find a way back without you.’

Drutheira drew the wisps of aethyr that would still respond to her will into a hurried conjuration, an arcane barrier between herself and the sorcerer. She remembered how she’d destroyed the dwarf fire-wizard those long years ago, the mighty death magic she had evoked to bring the creature to ruin. Now it was an ordeal to summon even a fraction of such power.

Malchior’s attack took the shape of a jagged spear, a thing of writhing shadows and moaning shades. It flashed from his outstretched hand, shrieking across the camp at her. The hasty ward she’d erected to defend herself crackled, flaring from unseen force to a sparking shell of purple light. The shell fractured as the spear stabbed into it, then crumbled apart as the sorcerer threw more energy into his magic. Drutheira cried out as the arcane shadow seared across her arm. She could feel the flesh wither where it brushed past her, sense the vitality ebbing away as the sorcery sucked some of her life essence out of her.

The sorcerer laughed and began to draw energy into himself for another conjuration. Drutheira knew she couldn’t resist another attack. Malchior’s next assault wouldn’t merely wound her, it would leave her crippled and helpless. She knew him better than to expect a swift, clean death. No, he’d take his time, savouring every scream and every cut.

In desperation, Drutheira looked to Ashniel, hoping that her acolyte would intervene. It wasn’t that the sorceress had any more love for her than Malchior, but she had to know what would happen if he prevailed. Bitter rivals, the two acolytes tolerated one another only because they needed each other. Once Drutheira was gone, it was doubtful Malchior would have further use for Ashniel.

Ashniel remained sitting at the edge of the camp. Incredibly, it seemed she was oblivious to the arcane duel being fought only a few yards away. There was a vapid look in her eyes, a lax cast to her features. Like some idiot thing, she just sat there, not even watching what was happening around her.

Then Ashniel’s body slumped forwards, exposing the grey-fletched arrow that had pierced her from behind. Sight of that arrow brought a surge of horror rushing through Drutheira’s heart. She knew that kind of arrow, had seen them strike down minions and companions many time before. But that had been in lost Nagarythe. To see the same kind of arrow here, in the unmapped wastes of Elthin Arvan, was impossible.

Her distraction made her defence even weaker. The sorcerous shell Drutheira had cast about her body exploded in a burst of shadow as Malchior’s magic slammed into it. She was hurled backwards, every inch of her skin feeling as though it had been scalded by a burning coldness. Hoarfrost coated her robe, dripped from her hair, clung to her flesh. It was an agony just to open her lips and try to utter a protective incantation.

Malchior scowled at her. ‘I lived in terror of you, once. Now you will live in terror of me. For a time.’ He glanced aside abruptly, belatedly noticing the prostrate form of Ashniel and the arrow sticking in her back. It was the sorcerer’s turn to attempt a hasty protective ward. His hand had just started the first gesture of his evocation when an arrow whistled out from the barren wastes and transfixed his head. Malchior swayed for a moment as the magic he’d drawn into his body gradually bled away. Then he crashed face first into the fire, crushing his last meal beneath him.

Drutheira took no comfort in her unexpected reprieve. The effects of Malchior’s spell were fading away now that he was dead, but they weren’t dispersing fast enough. She could barely breathe, much less manage any sort of conjuration. She could only look on helplessly as a shape rose from among the sandy dunes. At first it seemed like part of the dune had become animate and was gliding towards her. With each step a bit more of the illusion was cast aside. The walking drift of sand took on a humanoid outline, then resolved itself into the tall, lean shape of an elf. His enchanted cloak darkened, losing its sandy appearance to become a thing of dull grey, much like the fletching of the arrows in the quiver at the elf’s side.

‘Yours must have been a long hunt, shadow-crawler,’ Drutheira spat at the approaching elf. There was no mistaking the taint that clung to this apparition, the stigma of those of Nagarythe who shunned their rightful king, Malekith, to follow the line of pretenders led by the first Caledor.

‘I should have trailed you into the crypts of the Pale Queen,’ the shadow declared. Each word was laced with a bitterness that struck Drutheira like a lash. ‘Glory to Khaine that my hunt did not demand I go that far.’ Grimly, the elf lifted his hand to his face and pulled down the fold of cloth that covered his visage.

Drutheira’s eyes went wide with horror as she gazed on that countenance. It was a face that had haunted her darkest nightmares for centuries. ‘Ashelir,’ she gasped.

A sepulchral laugh escaped the shadow’s lips. ‘I am pleased you remember me. I had thought you’d forgotten the family you abandoned and left to die when you chased after the usurper and supported his cause.’

The druchii closed her eyes, unable to meet the gaze of her enemy. Shame, something she thought had been burned out of her soul long ago, raced through her veins. ‘Now my son comes to kill me,’ she whispered. Truly the gods had a cruel sense of humour that she should come to such a finish so far away from the lands that had been their home.

Ashelir drew one of the knives from his belt. For an instant, it seemed he would pounce upon her and sink the blade deep into her heart. Instead, the hate in his eyes subsided. ‘I am here for more than revenge,’ he declared. ‘I am here on behest of my patron. Here to serve the Phoenix Crown and the true king of Ulthuan.’ He cut a length of silvery rope from the coil that hung from the lining of his cloak. Sheathing his knife, he tested the strength of the cord.

‘I have come for you,’ Ashelir said. ‘To bring you back to my patron. Alive.’

Drutheira didn’t resist as her son bound her hands together. ‘It must disappoint you, to have looked forward to this day and be cheated of it because your master holds you back.’ She cried out in pain as Ashelir drew the cord tight.

‘There will be a great hole inside me when you are gone, witch,’ Ashelir snarled. ‘Hate and revenge have been my strength for so long, I don’t know what I will be without them.’

‘Then we have much in common,’ Drutheira said.

Ashelir reached to his knife again, caressing its ivory handle. ‘The only thing we have in common is the blade that will end your life. Make no mistake, witch, when my patron is finished with you, then you are mine.

‘Khaine himself won’t stay my hand then.’

‘Riposte! Riposte!’

Thoriol darted to the side as the Chracian came at him again. The warrior’s blade flashed towards him, glancing across his shoulder as he swung away from his adversary’s strike. Sparks flashed from his pauldron, little flecks of crimson enamel scraped away by the kiss of steel. The prince slashed his own blade at the warrior’s back, frowning when his foe twisted away at the last second.

‘Feint to your right! The right!’

Each time a new direction was barked at him, Thoriol felt his face turn red. He knew he was indifferent when it came to the sword, but he didn’t need to be reminded of it. Not from that quarter, anyway. When his instructors told him he was doing something wrong, it was to make him better. When his uncle did it, it was to emphasise his failings.

When Envaldein came around again, Thoriol deliberately overstepped, thrusting at the White Lion with enough carelessness that the Chracian was quick to jab at his ribs. Thoriol felt the teakwood button fixed to the tip of his opponent’s sword slap against his armour.

King Caledor II rose from his golden throne, his emerald robes swirling about his tall frame as he hastened down the dais and across the tiled floor. For a moment, Thoriol saw a touch of alarm on the royal visage, but it was quickly subdued by an expression of disappointment.

The king ignored Envaldein as he stepped past the warrior. After scoring his hit against Thoriol, the White Lion had bowed and laid his sword on the floor. He kept his eyes averted as the king swept past him. The Chracian was an astonishingly skilled swordsman – among the best in all the ten kingdoms – but his king extended to him the same degree of courtesy he might show a dog. It was a display that never failed to disgust Thoriol no matter how often he saw it.

‘That was an underwhelming exhibition,’ Caledor sighed. ‘If you had been crossing swords with a druchii, you’d be dead now.’ The king reached out, pulling the button from the point of Thoriol’s sword. He frowned as he looked at the blade. ‘Hardly an elegant weapon. Your position entitles you to a much finer blade. A sword of ithilmar, keen as the beak of a phoenix and light as an eagle’s feather.’

Thoriol bowed his head. ‘A gracious offer, my liege.’

Caledor sighed. ‘An offer you have already refused.’ He tossed the teakwood button on the floor. A file of servants stood along the far side of the room, arrayed to attend their king. One of them hurried out from the line, snatching up the button while it was still rolling and swiftly disposing of it.

‘Such ingratitude is unseemly.’ The sharp retort came from a thin, pale elf wearing heavy robes of scarlet trimmed in gold. The expression of resentment on the asur’s face was undisguised. There was no love between Thoriol and Hulviar, the king’s seneschal. The slightest hint of royal disapproval and the mask of polite propriety would slip away and expose the hostility lurking beneath. It was easy enough to appreciate that hostility: before Thoriol joined the king’s court, Hulviar had been his closest advisor. Caledor’s new interest in his nephew had created competition for the royal ear.

‘I am not ungrateful,’ Thoriol corrected Hulviar. He held the sword upright, displaying the polished steel of the blade, the intricate lettering that flowed down the edge, the delicate carving of the hilt and guard, the metal dragon with folded wings that served as the pommel. It was many years since he’d been presented with this sword. He had abandoned it once, cast it aside on the slopes of the Dragonspine. He had found it again when going through his father’s effects in Tor Alessi.

Thoriol stiffened his back and returned Hulviar’s hostile gaze. ‘This sword is important to me,’ he said. ‘No other blade could ever take its place. If I will ever become the warrior my liege wishes me to become, it must be with this blade and no other.’

‘And this isn’t the arrogance of youthful pride?’ Hulviar sneered. Too late the seneschal recognised the trap he’d walked into. His sneer withered when he saw Thoriol turn towards the king.

‘This is the sword given to me by my father,’ Thoriol told Caledor.

The king was silent for a moment, his expression inscrutable even to Hulviar. At length, Caledor gave the slightest of nods. ‘Prove worthy of it,’ he said. ‘You have a great legacy to live up to. The House of Tor Caled is the line of kings and heroes. There is none greater.’

The veil of propriety was back when Hulviar addressed his king. ‘My liege, forgive me, but we have received new reports from the colonies.’

Caledor gestured to the kneeling Envaldein, dismissing the warrior. Slowly, the king retraced his steps to his throne. As he seated himself, he stared out of the arched window that looked eastwards. ‘It is always the colonies,’ he said. His look was sharp when Hulviar approached the throne. ‘And it is always bad news from the colonies. What are these fools doing to let a rabble of mud-dwelling savages vex them so?’

‘The colonial council in Tor Alessi reports that the dwarfs have assaulted Athel Toralien again. Dwarf ships also bombarded the waterfront in Sith Remora, the first time they have dared to attack the port. There are also rumours–’

‘I care nothing for rumours!’ Caledor snapped, his fist crashing against the jewelled arm of his throne. ‘It is clear that the council is too incompetent to conduct this war. They have squandered every consideration shown to them. They hide behind their walls and leave these savages free to range where they will.’

‘I was there at the Fourth Siege of Tor Alessi,’ Thoriol reminded him. ‘The dawi are a powerful enemy. One that is not easily challenged.’

Hulviar shook his head. ‘They do not seem to challenge the dwarfs at all,’ he said. ‘They have adopted a defensive mindset. They lose a few dragons to some mud-skulker trickery and they retreat. They don’t send word of victories. Instead they plead for more. More warriors. More weapons. More dragons.’

‘If they ask for more, perhaps they need it,’ Thoriol suggested.

‘We have nothing to spare for the colonies,’ Hulviar said. ‘Everything is committed to the campaign against Naggaroth. Malekith is in retreat – his disciples will not be able to resist much longer.’

‘How long can our colonies resist?’ Thoriol wondered.

‘As long as they are expected to,’ Hulviar said. ‘Once the druchii problem is resolved, the whole might of Ulthuan can be set against the dwarfs.’

Thoriol directed a cold smile at the seneschal. ‘Then you make a good case for them to remain on the defensive. To wait out the dwarfs…’

‘We will not wait to punish those animals,’ Caledor snarled. ‘In their burrows they celebrate the murder of my brother. I will not allow that disgrace to continue. The dwarfs will learn what it means to shed the blood of a prince of Tor Caled.’

Hulviar glanced anxiously at the throne. ‘You will draw troops away from the Naggaroth beachhead?’

Caledor nodded. ‘We have Malekith in retreat. We can spare the warriors to teach these mud-diggers a lesson.’ The king leaned back in his seat, his expression growing pensive. ‘More important than fresh troops, however, is fresh leadership. The council has proven their ineffectiveness at prosecuting the war. No war is won through defence. Battle must be taken to the enemy. Imladrik understood that. I know he disagreed with the necessity of war, but he did understand how to win that war. The council doesn’t.’

‘You will send one of your generals to take charge, as you did with Imladrik?’ Hulviar asked. ‘Perhaps Lord Belicar or Thirian?’

The king laughed, and in that laugh was all the scorn and contempt in his royal body. ‘There is no need to draw any of my best generals away from eradicating the druchii. These mud-lickers don’t warrant such consideration. Lord Myrion has no pressing duties.’

‘Lord Myrion is but a garrison commander in Cothique,’ Hulviar objected. ‘He’s never commanded more than a few companies at one time.’

‘He is my choice just the same.’ Caledor’s voice was cold as he made the statement. ‘Myrion chafes under garrison duties. He is eager to do anything to bring glory to his name. Let the colonials try to hide behind their walls with Myrion commanding them. Just let them try! When I cast him upon the shores of Elthin Arvan, I shall be loosing a wild griffon upon the dwarfs.’

Thoriol rushed to the throne, prostrating himself at the king’s feet. ‘Please, majesty, allow me to accompany Lord Myrion.’ His hand clenched about the dragon pommel of the sword at his side.

Caledor shook his head, a hint of sadness in his expression. ‘No. Not this time,’ he told Thoriol. ‘Hunting savages in the wilds is no place for the House of Tor Caled.’ Again, he looked through the eastward window, seeming to stare across the ocean to those distant shores. ‘It never was,’ he added, and just for a heartbeat, Thoriol thought he saw a tear gleaming in his uncle’s eye.

A wave of heat rose from the forge, carrying with it a faint flicker of amber light. Rune magic, aethyric power bound into the forge itself. Only a runesmith could work such a forge – only his mind was trained to appreciate the intricacies of dealing with bound magic. A normal smith would find his mind wandering, his imagination seized by flights of fancy inspired by the escaping energies. He would lose the discipline and concentration demanded by his work. Whatever he cast would fail and bring disgrace to his name.

Morek knew how those smiths who had defied convention and attempted to use a rune forge must have felt. Even he, accustomed as he was to binding magic into stone and steel, felt his will put to the test as he laboured over Morgrim’s sword. Weird emanations rose from the broken blade, strange harmonies that set his brain pounding and his heart racing. Once, the elven enchantments had even provoked a nosebleed, though he’d been on his guard for such malignant vibrations since.

It had been the better part of a year already and Morek had yet to reforge the blade. Before he started his work it had been necessary to familiarise himself with the sword, to understand the enchantments bound within it. He’d had to study the blade’s communion with the rune forge, find a way to bring their disparate vibrations into harmony.

Forek had helped for a time. His command of the elven tongue and elven letters had been of immeasurable help, though Morek was reluctant to confess that to anyone. The former ambassador had deciphered the name of the sword: Ifulvin. Morgrim had called it ‘Bitter-Blade’ and such, Morek understood, was the name’s translation. But to work proper magic upon anything it was vital to know its true name. By knowing the sword’s name in the elven tongue, the runesmith hoped to tame it, subdue its enchantment enough to bring it under control.

The whole process had been too slow for Forek. His translation work done, the steelbeard had withdrawn. Morek understood that he had left Karaz-a-Karak entirely. Like Morgrim, Forek burned to return to battle, balking at each and every delay. The steelbeard would have gladly followed Morgrim’s banner, but with Elgidum restrained by High King Gotrek’s order, he had been compelled to seek another general to serve – one who would lead him to battle with the elgi and give him the chance to avenge even a small part of the great shame that had been done to him.

Morek watched the heat of the forge rippling along the length of Ifulvin. If they felt any shame at all, he imagined that the elves would be dishonoured to lose such a sword. He had discovered a grudging admiration for it as he laboured upon it. Far from being the fragile, delicate thing he’d expected, he had discovered a weapon of terrible potency and astounding craftsmanship. Certainly dwarf craftsmanship had proven better – hadn’t Azdrakghar broken Ifulvin? – but it was foolish to believe that the elgi swordsmiths were without skill. Ifulvin was a blade built for speed and finesse, as different from the heavy, sturdy axes of the dawi as the mountains from the sea. Perhaps there was a lesson there, something about the psychology of both peoples. The elgi, swift and flighty. The dawi, slow and enduring.

Of more importance to Morek, however, was deciphering the weird magic the elves had infused into the blade. It was frustrating – strange and yet familiar all at once. Perhaps the way the elves used magic was a key to overcoming them. Where a runesmith harnessed magic, bound it into solid shapes, chained it into a semblance of substance, an elf mage worked much differently. They seemed to leave the magic as it was, letting it alter the things it was focused upon rather than having the focus change the magic. It was a difficult concept to work his mind around, as strange to him as learning that fire burned cold or that water could be dry. Deep down inside, his spirit rebelled at the wrongness of such concepts, much less seeing them put into practice.

‘This is what keeps you from your duties?’

Morek swung around as the voice smacked across his ears. A flush crept into the runelord’s face as he watched his mentor and master march into the crypt-like hall that held the rune forge. Ranuld Silverthumb’s long beard was tucked into the broad belt he wore over his fur-trimmed robes. Jewelled torcs glittered on his arms and a circlet of gromril topped by a piece of polished malachite rested upon his brow. Runes sparked from the stones set in the rings he wore, and about his neck hung a ponderous granite pectoral upon which were set several potent symbols of power.

Ranuld would have cast a magnificent image were it not for the wizened appearance of his skin, the drawn look of his face. His eyes weren’t as vibrant as they had once been. Morek knew they’d lost much of their lustre when the High Runelord’s authority began to be defied. None openly flaunted Ranuld’s advice or outright ignored his requests, but they were refused just the same. The kings didn’t wish to send their runelords abroad, even to convene the Burudin. The same kings saw no reason not to allow their runesmiths to craft weapons Ranuld told them were too dangerous to forge. Few could comprehend the drive to seek out ‘old magic’ in the oldest deeps when there were so many more immediate uses for their runesmiths to be put to.

Morek was one of the few who continued to stand by Ranuld and trust completely to his wisdom. He was almost a living ancestor, old enough that he had walked these halls during the glory days of the Karaz Ankor. If a dwarf didn’t respect that, then he was unworthy of his beard. It pained him that his master could think he’d defied one of his orders.

‘Master, I did as you wished,’ Morek explained. ‘I have been back for nearly a year now. Do you not remember when I brought back word from the rest of the Burudin?’

Ranuld pressed a hand to the side of his head, kneading his temple as though to stir the memory into being. A confused look came into his eyes. He lowered his hand and pointed at Ifulvin. ‘You are recasting an elf blade?’ He made a disapproving grunt at the back of his throat. ‘Wilful things, elgi enchantments. You have to keep your eye on them every second or they slip away. King Snorri Whitebeard had an elgi sword. A gift from their Prince Malekith. That was… oh… a very long time ago. Before you were born.’

Morek didn’t think it was prudent to remind Ranuld that it was before the High Runelord’s time as well. These last years, Ranuld’s mind had started to wander, losing focus on what he considered petty trivialities. Things like what year it was or what a person’s name might be.

‘I am fixing this blade for Morgrim Bargrum,’ Morek explained. ‘He won it in battle with an elgi prince.’

Ranuld nodded, stroking his beard. Strands of hair came away as they caught in his rings. ‘Elgidum,’ he said. ‘He who will slay the dragon and become king.’

Again Morek bit his tongue. He had heard from Morgrim how Ranuld had chanced upon Prince Snorri and his cousin deep beneath Karak Krum. He’d muttered his prophecy then, but had failed to tell Snorri he was speaking of Morgrim rather than the prince. Now Morek wondered if the prophecy was even meant for Morgrim. The only dragons that had been felled in the war were those at Kazad Mingol – one claimed by the crews of the doomed skryzan-harbark and another finished off by Rundin Torbansonn of the skarrenawi.

The High Runelord shook his head, some measure of clarity returning to his eyes. He clapped a hand on Morek’s shoulder. ‘This war will consume us if we let it,’ he declared. ‘The old magic is slipping away, sinking too deep for our picks and shovels to follow. It will be a slow death. Excruciatingly slow. We’ll cling to past glories and hold our heads high even as we feel everything dying around us.’

‘The elgi will not win,’ Morek said, trying to reassure his master. ‘They don’t have the stamina for a long war.’

‘Without the old magic we will be lost,’ Ranuld persisted. ‘It won’t matter if elgi or dawi prevails – the Karaz Ankor will be broken.’ He fixed his eyes on Morek, as though he could impress his meaning on the runelord through his gaze alone. After a moment, he turned away and started to retrace his steps, returning to whatever secret door had admitted him to the hall.

‘I have to call it back,’ Ranuld declared, but Morek didn’t know if he was speaking to him or muttering to himself. ‘I have to make the old magic come back to us. We can’t follow it, so it has to come back to us.’

Morek looked back at the rune forge, watching the weird energies rising off the shattered elgi sword. If Ranuld was right and the magic of the runelords was fading, then was the same true of the elves and their mages?

CHAPTER FOUR

The Lord of the Tunnels
243rd year of the reign of Caledor II

Steel splintered before the axe’s bite, driving slivers of jagged metal into the elf’s soft flesh. The elf warrior struggled to bring his shield slamming down onto the armoured hands that gripped the butchering axe, hoping to break the dwarf’s assault. Already the effort was beyond the stricken knight. Like those of his steed before him, the wounds he had suffered were too deep, and he was losing too much blood too rapidly to summon any kind of strength into his limbs. Like a weary moth, the asur sagged against the axe, his own sword and shield drooping from his lifeless hands.

From behind his mask of metal, Forek Grimbok glared at the corpse twined around his axe. He kicked at the elgi knight, forcing the corpse to slip away and free his weapon. The knight had made a bold display, rushing to intercept Forek. Surely the elf had seen enough to know what kind of foe he was challenging? Since battle had been joined, the steelbeard had been like some crazed engine of destruction, smashing his way through the carnage, leaving the mangled husks of his enemy strewn behind him, marking his path with their blood.

Forek scowled at the knight’s seeming bravery. He wasn’t deceived. He knew enough about the elgi to understand something of their ways. The knight was highborn and therefore unimpressed by the dwarf’s harvest of mere peasant elgi. He’d thought to make short work of the steelbeard. Perhaps, in that last instant as Forek’s axe chopped through his hip, the asur appreciated what a dire mistake he’d made.

All around Forek, the sounds of battle were fading. The fighting had raged for several hours now. The great thane Brok Stonefist had lured an entire elgi army into a carefully laid trap. First the dwarfs had ambushed the asur column on the road, emerging from hidden tunnels, half-forgotten fingers of the Ungdrin Ankor. They hadn’t caused much damage, but enough to rile their enemy. When the ambushers retreated and the elgi saw how few they were, it had offended their pride. Angered and insulted, the elgi had chased after the ambushers… and straight into the real trap.

The slaughter had been vicious when three thousand dwarfs emerged from hiding. The elgi couldn’t know that the dawi had been in place and waiting for three days among the concealed shafts and pits of an old copper mine. For three days they had bided their time, barely twitching a muscle, becoming as stolid as the stone around them. Then, like an avalanche, they had come crashing down upon the unsuspecting elves.

Cries of ‘Khazuk! Khazuk!’ rang out from every quarter as the remaining pockets of elgi warriors were surrounded and annihilated. A few of the knights, like the one Forek had killed, had managed to break through the dawi ring. They could have made a good escape, but instead had swung back around to engage the dwarfs. Their charge had faltered almost at once, slamming as it did into an immovable wall of dwarfish steel.

Forek hesitated a moment, cocking his head to one side and listening to the tumult. As High King Gotrek’s reckoner, his sense of hearing had been honed to a remarkable degree, able to pick out the whisper of a visiting king halfway across Karaz-a-Karak’s great hall. That facility to focus on a single sound amid whatever clamour sought to drown it out now served the steelbeard well. Hefting his vicious axe, Forek hastened across the battlefield. He gave scant notice to the dead lying strewn across the ground, his attention fixated upon the voice he’d picked out from the roar of battle.

The object of his search was standing on a dead elgi stallion, the head of his axe sunk into the animal’s side. Brok Stonefist was an impressive sight, clad in rune-etched steel plate, his long grey beard festooned with golden rings and silver combs. A great eagle-winged helm covered his head, its mask dropping down to just below his nose. The thane’s steely eyes stared from behind the visor, cold and brilliant as the light of a winter dawn. The thane was almost ancient by dwarfish standards, but the bite of time had yet to steal the strength from his arms or wither the prodigious stamina of a warrior who had spent his youth running messages through the dark tunnels of the Ungdrin Ankor.

Those days were long past. Now Brok was a mighty hero of the Karaz Ankor, the favoured champion of King Hrallson. He’d been leading the warriors of Karak Azul for years, displaying a knack for strategy and cunning that never failed to take the elves by surprise. His unmatched familiarity with the Ungdrin Ankor allowed his forces to move freely beneath the plains, without worrying about elf scouts and flying dragons. He had become something of a bogey to the elgi and the enemy had bestowed upon him the title Arhain-tosaith, the shadow from the earth.

At the moment, Brok was much more substantial to his foes, boldly standing before a tiny pocket of elf warriors. The elgi were among the last survivors, clustered around a standard that had grown bloodied and tattered during the conflict. Surrounded on all sides by dwarfs, the enemy remained defiant, brandishing their swords and spears. Perhaps if there had been a bowman among them, they might have dared a shot at Brok, but as it stood all they could do was to shout at their foe.

‘They sound upset, whatever that perfumed gibberish means,’ Brok laughed, his humour spreading to the warriors around him. He pulled at one of the combs in his beard, scowling at the tiny ring of elgi survivors.

‘They are.’ Brok’s warriors moved aside as Forek strode over to the thane. Many of them clapped their fists against their chest in a gesture of respect to the steelbeard.

Brok was thoughtful a moment. There were some dwarfs who understood Eltharin, but few among the thane’s army. He wagged a finger at the surrounded asur. ‘Any of that doggerel useful or important?’

Forek listened a moment as an elf wearing a dark purple cloak over his silvery steel plate armour stepped a little away from the others and began to speak. The steelbeard scowled beneath his metal mask. How like the faithless elgi to put their personal pride ahead of all other concerns. Whatever they were, the elgi weren’t stupid. They had to know full well the tactical value of what they’d disclosed. They had to know that after this, the forests would burn. Dawi axes would again stand before the walls of Tor Alessi and Athel Toralien and Athel Maraya. They had to know this, but they didn’t care. He looked over at the standard the survivors were gathered around, then turned his gaze to the arrogantly defiant elf lord, his swan-winged helm plated in gold and encrusted with gemstones. Around his throat he wore a ruby big enough to choke an ogre. The blade he held at his side was slim, elegant and richly engraved.

No, the elves weren’t trying any trickery. Brok’s ambush had caught more than an army.

‘The one in gold is Lord Myrion,’ Forek reported.

Brok whistled in appreciation of the magnitude of Forek’s words. ‘The general of all the elgi,’ he observed. He squinted at the resplendent elf lord. ‘Dresses the part, I suppose. Elgi always invest more effort in appearance than substance.’ He ripped his axe free from the carcass under his boots and shook it at the elves. ‘This isn’t some trick to get us to spare them for ransom?’

‘It is no trick,’ Forek said. He pointed at the standard. ‘They want that rag returned to their kinfolk when the battle is ended. That is all.’

A laugh rumbled up from Brok’s stout belly. ‘So the general wants a family gewgaw sent back to elfland?’ He shook his axe at the asur. ‘Tell the tall-ears their kin can buy it back from me when I’m done wiping my arse with it.’

When Forek translated the thane’s words, it was Lord Myrion himself who replied to Brok’s crude abuse. The gold-helmed elf brandished his sword high, heedless of the dozen crossbows focused on him. Myrion’s voice rose in a long diatribe. If the meaning of the words was lost to the dwarfs, the tone in which they were uttered wasn’t. Growls and grumbles echoed among the bearded warriors.

Forek didn’t bother to translate all of Myrion’s speech. Even when they had been at peace, he’d found little patience for the flowery extravagance of the elf language. ‘He says his gods will curse you if you don’t grant him the respect due a foe killed in honour.’

Brok spat into his beard as another laugh shook him. ‘Seems to me I haven’t seen any elgi gods wandering about lately. They must have more sense than their poncey spawn. At least they stayed back on that damn island where they belong!’ The thane pumped his fist in a rude gesture, letting Myrion know precisely what the dawi thought of his gods and their threats.

The elf lord started towards Brok, but his warriors grabbed hold of him, restraining the outraged general. One of them called out to Forek, the elf’s voice actually devoid of the habitual condescension exhibited by their race. For a heartbeat, the desperation of that appeal evoked sympathy in the reckoner. Then the memory of what had been done to him crushed any mercy growing within the steelbeard.

‘They want you to meet their general in single combat,’ Forek told Brok.

Brok swung his axe upwards, letting it come to rest against his shoulder. Puffing out his chest, he climbed down from his morbid perch. ‘I killed thirty-six elgi today. One more will be good for my appetite.’

Before Brok could take another step towards the elves, a harsh voice cried out from behind the dwarfish ranks. ‘Hold, my lord. The elgi vermin is unworthy of dying on your axe.’

The dwarf warriors parted as a savage apparition stalked forwards. He was a dwarf, broad-shouldered and powerfully built, with a long beard spilling down his chest and a massive axe gripped in his brawny fists. There, however, his resemblance to the other dawi ended. Where the rest of the dwarfs were armoured for war, this one went unshod and bare-chested. Spirals of tattoos marked his skin and iron chains pierced the flesh of each arm, every third link of their length anchored in his body. His scalp had been shaved, only a narrow strip of hair left running down the centre of his head. This had been starched with a stinking mixture of grease and animal fat so that it spiked upwards like a cockscomb.

Every dwarf in Brok’s army knew this warrior. He was Rundin Torbansonn of the skarrenawi. Rundin Dragonslayer, many called him, for he had killed an elgi drakk at the fall of Kazad Mingol. Others called him Rundin Oathbreaker, for after that battle he had broken his oaths of loyalty and service to High King Skarnag Grum and led an exodus of hill dwarfs back into the mountains. He was, at once, both a heroic and a despised figure, perpetrator of a great victory and an unforgivable offence.

As he stood between Brok and Forek, both dwarfs could see the ugly brand burned into Rundin’s breast, right above his heart. It was the rune of Grimnir, a promise made in flesh by the disgraced hero. The nature of that promise was the most whispered rumour among Brok’s warriors. Many said it meant Rundin had vowed to redeem himself with a life of battle. Others claimed it wasn’t life he sought but a glorious death that would eclipse the shame he’d brought upon his own name.

‘No elgi is worth a dawi axe,’ Brok growled at Rundin. A scowl knotted his brow as he glared into the hill dwarf’s eyes. ‘Or is it that you think I can’t beat him?’

Rundin shook his head. ‘You are Ungdrin Ankor Rik, Lord of the Tunnels. Without you, what will become of your army?’ He waved his hand at the elves, the chain on his arm clattering as he did so. ‘The elgi have lost the day, their army is vanquished. But if they can kill you, they can yet win the battle.’

Brok’s anger only increased. ‘I can kill that scum and a score like him with one hand tied to my beard! I was gutting urk for King Hrallson before you were a gleam in your father’s eye! I’ve skinned trolls while they were still trying to eat me! You’ve dishonoured one lord already – I should think that was shame enough for you.’

‘I’ve sworn no oaths to you,’ Rundin growled through clenched teeth. ‘I fight alongside you because we share an enemy. Don’t forget that.’

Forek stepped between the two warriors before their mounting anger could come to blows. ‘Don’t give the elgi the satisfaction,’ he hissed at them. A nod of his masked head drew the attention of both dwarfs back to the clustered asur. There was a look of scornful amusement on some of their faces. Even Lord Myrion was smiling. ‘They think us brute savages. Don’t prove them right.’

‘Then tell this unbaraki to step aside and let me kill that grinning dog,’ Brok declared.

Rundin’s eyes went wide with shock as he heard the slur drop from Brok’s mouth. Forek pressed a restraining hand on the hill dwarf, pushing him back before he could answer the thane’s insult with a balled fist or the flat of his axe.

‘You could best the elgi in fair combat,’ Forek assured Brok, slipping back into the courteous flattery of Gotrek’s court. ‘But would they fight you fair? Rundin is right – killing you would help them, maybe even balance the army they’ve lost today.’ He reached up, his fingers playing across the chains of his gold beard. ‘Never underestimate the treachery of elves.’

Brok stepped back, shaking his head in exasperation. ‘Gazul take ’em all,’ he cursed. ‘A volley or two will sort things out.’ He turned to give the order to the crossbowmen who had their weapons trained upon the elves.

‘No,’ Rundin said, the word ringing out like the command of Grimnir himself. He matched Brok’s sullen gaze. ‘Let me face them. Let me show them the might of the dawi. Let me show them what courage and honour mean.’

Brok tapped the side of his helm with his finger. ‘You’re a zaki, you know that?’ A bitter smile pulled across his weathered face. ‘Still, if the elgi kill you, then I’m rid of you both.’ He looked at Forek. ‘Tell the elgi this lunatic will fight them. If they win, I’ll send that rag of theirs back to Tor Alessi.’

It took the steelbeard only a few moments to explain Brok’s terms to them. There was no mistaking the disappointment on Lord Myrion’s face as he stared at the nearly naked Rundin. Clearly the elf shared Brok’s opinion of the hill dwarf’s sanity. Angry gestures and words were his response. One of the general’s retainers stepped out from the survivors, a long-handled elf axe clasped in his hands.

Forek turned to Rundin. ‘The elgi think you are unfit to fight their general. They’re matching you against the lowest commoner left among them. It is meant to return the insult they feel Brok is paying them.’

Rundin spat onto the ground, glaring at the elves. ‘After I kill him, what then? Will they send the general against me? Or do I have to kill them all?’

‘Those are Lord Myrion’s personal retainers,’ Forek told him. ‘Whatever happens, you’ll have to kill them all.’

‘Grimnir smiles on me,’ Rundin said. He slapped his hand across the god’s brand, as though to invoke Grimnir’s attention. Then, without any hesitation, he charged at the waiting elf.

Even for warriors who had spent decades marching into battle, fighting across the length of the Karaz Ankor and the asur colonies, seldom had they seen such a spectacle. The elf axeman knew his business, coming at Rundin with what seemed an overhand sweep designed to open the dwarf’s throat. Before he could connect, however, he spun his body into a rapid twist and set the blade flashing towards Rundin’s knees. Impossibly, Rundin was able to react to his foe’s feint, bringing his own axe flashing down to intercept the elven blade. Sparks danced away as the weapons ground against one another.

The axeman leapt back, recovering almost immediately from Rundin’s block. The elf tried to employ the longer reach of his height and weapon to keep the dwarf at bay, managing to somehow brace himself each time his foe parried, absorbing the shock of the violent collisions with a facility engendered by long experience. Again and again he feinted an attack in one direction, only to pivot at the last instant to send his blade chopping at some seemingly unprotected quarter. Each time, however, Rundin’s axe was there to thwart the blow. Even the watching dwarfs were dumbfounded by the Dragonslayer’s speed and skill.

When the end came, it was both sudden and shocking. The elf axeman made another of his deceptive assaults on Rundin, bringing his axe low so that he might draw his foe’s attention to knee, leg and belly, thereby exposing his upper body. This time, however, Rundin didn’t wait to meet the blow, but jumped back. As the elven axe flashed through the space he had occupied, the dwarf’s blade slashed at his foe. The longer weapon and the mailed arm that held it were chopped in half, their wreckage rolling across the bloodied ground. Before the maimed elf could even open his mouth to scream, Rundin slammed his blade into his enemy’s shoulder and sent him crumpling in a welter of gore.

Looking across from the ruin of the elf soldier, Rundin shook his bloodied axe at Lord Myrion. Then the dwarf raked his thumb across his throat, a gesture of murderous promise that transcended the language barrier. Colour rushed into the elf lord’s pale face, overwhelming his surprise at the butchery of his retainer. Shaking off the soldiers around him, the elven general stepped out to meet the hill dwarf.

Myrion raised his blade in mocking salute to the dwarf. Rundin merely turned his head and spat on the ground. Without further preamble, the two combatants rushed at one another.

Myrion’s blade was like quicksilver, flying before him in a shimmering skein of deadly ithilmar, moving with such speed that it became a blur to the onlookers, indistinct as a phantom. Its effects, however, were far from phantasmal. Cuts blossomed all across Rundin’s exposed flesh. The slashes were shallow, but they bled freely, coating the dwarf’s body crimson.

Rundin sounded no cry of pain and did not retreat before Myrion’s flying blade. He was determined to press his own attack, yet every time he tried to move forwards, the elf would take a step back. With calculating deliberation, Myrion kept the distance between them, maintained the advantage of his longer reach. He wouldn’t make the mistake of his retainer and court disaster by trying to end the contest quickly. No, the elf lord was playing the longer game. Each cut he visited against the dwarf was like a leech sucking away at Rundin’s vitality. By inches and degrees he was sapping the dwarf’s strength, weakening him, draining his endurance. Only when Rundin was bled down to the dregs, only when he was no longer capable of fighting, only then would Myrion move for the kill.

Beside him, Forek heard Brok utter a disgusted moan as he realised the elf lord’s despicable tactics. The thane had no fondness for Rundin, but no dawi wanted to see another dealt such a humiliating death. It was like watching a baited bear being worn down by hounds, a villainous sport Forek had seen the elves indulge in when he’d visited Athel Numiel as an ambassador before the war. It was clear the thane had the same misgiving. Brok looked towards his waiting crossbowmen, the command to loose bolts into the arrogant elf lord almost on his lips. Only the understanding that it would bring further disgrace to Rundin to have his life saved in such manner caused Brok to hesitate.

The decision became unnecessary a moment later. Myrion’s lightning blade licked out at Rundin, but this time instead of striking vulnerable flesh it struck much tougher iron. One of the chains piercing the flesh of the dwarf’s arms bore the brunt of the elf’s attack. A link snapped before Myrion’s blade, the razored edge biting through the metal. The frayed end of the chain spilled outwards and snapped against the elf’s fingers.

It was a slight, stinging blow, yet its effect was profound. Instinctively, Myrion drew his arm back from the source of his sudden hurt. For a breath, the elf lord’s astonishing defence faltered. There was a pause in that curtain of flying ithilmar he’d woven around himself, a pause as devastating as a breach in any castle wall.

Rundin’s axe lashed out as Myrion recoiled. The biting edge crunched into the elf’s chest, shredding his silk surcoat and grinding into the armour beneath. The general was sent sprawling by the impact, cast to the ground. Even as he started to rise, to slash out with his sword, Rundin hurled himself at Myrion. Bellowing a feral war-cry, the Dragonslayer leapt upon the prone elf lord. He brought his heavy axe swinging down with both hands clasped about the haft. With the full weight and strength of the dwarf hero behind it, the axe clove into Myrion’s gilded helm, splitting both it and the skull inside like cordwood.

The remaining elves cried out in horror and disbelief at the abrupt, brutal destruction of their lord and general. Rundin wiped Myrion’s blood from his face and turned to confront them. Before the elves could attack, however, Brok gave the command to loose bolts. The quarrels slammed into the furious elves, piercing their steel armour and puncturing the warriors inside. The first volley put most of them down, a second finished them off completely.

Rundin stared coldly at the dying elves, then at the slaughtered general lying at his feet. Without a word, he turned and stalked back through the dawi ranks. The dwarfs parted respectfully before him, many raising their voices to cheer the skarrenawi’s feat. For now, none of them remembered Rundin Oathbreaker. There was only Rundin Dragonslayer now. Killer of elgi. The still-bleeding dwarf paid no notice to their cheers but marched away to find some more obscure corner of the battlefield.

Brok watched Rundin until the hill dwarf was no longer visible. ‘Might have shown a little gratitude,’ the thane grumbled. ‘If I didn’t give the command, he’d be lying there next to that elgi snake.’

‘That’s what he wanted,’ Forek said. He was surprised by the sense of admiration that he felt as he said it. ‘It isn’t victory he wants. It’s a death others will remember.’ The steelbeard shook the curious mood, turning to regard the dead elf lord and his retainers. Still standing above them was Lord Myrion’s standard. ‘Are you going to send that back to Tor Alessi?’

Brok frowned as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. After watching Rundin’s fight with the elf lord, he had to grudgingly admit that the enemy had been playing on some last chance to kill him and leave his own army in disarray. ‘Cast it down,’ Brok ordered. He looked at the dead Myrion with his split skull.

‘Leave it here with the rest of the elgi garbage.’

The army of Lord Salendor marched along the winding road that had been blazed through the vast expanse of Loren Lacoi. Riding a white mare near to the centre of the column, Liandra felt her attention constantly straying from the warriors around her to the trees flanking the road.

The forest seemed thicker, more wild and overgrown than Liandra remembered it. She’d ridden these trails many times between Athel Maraya and Kor Vanaeth, at least after she’d desisted from riding Vranesh on her errands to the other elf colonies. A dragon, of course, wasn’t always in the mood to ferry an asur mage across Elthin Arvan, however indulgent the reptile was of its companion.

They were both gone, of course. Vranesh and Kor Vanaeth. In less than a day, Liandra lost both her city and her dragon. Both of them taken from her by the persistent evil of the druchii. First the traitors had taken her mother when she was still but a child, then they had unleashed one of their black dragons against her city and massacred her people. Then, finally, they had taken Vranesh from her.

Maybe that was why the forest felt so much darker and menacing than it ever had before. Liandra could no longer feel her connection with Vranesh; she no longer had the warmth and security of the drake’s ancient power to give her strength and fire her spirit. When Vranesh died, the loss had left a great hole inside her that she didn’t think anything would be able to fill. In many ways, the loss of Vranesh had hurt her even more than Prince Imladrik’s death. As much as she’d loved him, as close as they had been, as much as they had shared, he had never really been a part of her. There had always been Yethanial, his wife back in Tor Vael in Ulthuan. Thoriol, the splendid son his wife had given him. Draukhain, the awesome drake who shared the dragonsong with him. So many who had shared his life. For Liandra, there had only been Vranesh.

She still blamed herself for Vranesh’s death. She had been so focused on revenge, on destroying the black dragon and the druchii witch Drutheira that she hadn’t thought about the high cost of vengeance. True, she’d managed to kill the black dragon and subdue the witch, but that hardly made up for the death of a creature as magnificent as Vranesh. She’d left Drutheira captive in the dungeons below Oeragor before Morgrim’s army captured it. There’d been some naïve hope that the witch would be proof to satisfy the dwarfs that this war wasn’t started by the asur. Looking back, she recognised how foolish that idea had been. The dwarfs would never let facts stand in the way of their grudges. They were too stubborn to ever listen to reason.

Liandra only hoped that Morgrim hadn’t made the witch’s death a quick one when the dwarfs found her.

A sound from among the trees had Liandra twisting around in her saddle. The spell she’d worked upon her eyes enabled them to pierce the dark of night as though it were bright as midday. She had an impression of motion, somewhere back among the undergrowth, but when she focused there was nothing to be seen. Throughout the ride from Athel Maraya she’d had these ‘fancies’ – motions caught out of the corner of her eye, yet never anything that lingered long enough to actually be seen.

‘Is it not the dawi who are meant to despise the woods?’ The question was asked as a half-jest, but there was an undercurrent of genuine concern running beneath. Lord Salendor, Master of Athel Maraya, walked his horse closer to Liandra’s. Once, they had both sat upon the Council of Five in Tor Alessi, but that had been years ago. Before Kor Vanaeth had been razed to the ground for the second time. Before she’d lost Vranesh. One of the first things Lord Myrion had done when he arrived in Tor Alessi to take command of the colonies was to remove her from the council, replacing her with Lord Dlryll of Sith Remora, ‘leader of a living community, not a vanquished one’.

It was ironic, then, that she should find herself here, riding with an army out to avenge Lord Myrion’s death. But that was because she had so few friends left in the colonies and Salendor was one of those few.

Liandra forced herself to look away from the trees, to ignore the furtive motions she was certain wouldn’t be there if she actually focused on them. ‘I don’t despise the woods, but I wonder if they despise us. We have wrought them great injury.’

Salendor nodded and smiled sympathetically. ‘A necessary evil. The blight of war.’ He gestured to the column of soldiers marching all around them. Three thousand asur warriors drawn from across the colonies and the ten kingdoms, supplemented by their baggage train, were bound to leave their mark on the land. ‘Take comfort that we do not despoil the way the dwarfs do. We take what we must, destroy only what is unavoidable. They cut and burn out of simple spite. They ruin what they know we appreciate.’

‘But do we?’ Liandra asked. ‘Do we truly appreciate? We say we do, certainly, and perhaps we even believe it.’ She waved her hand at the branches stretching overhead, the green canopy that shadowed the trail. ‘We come here as colonists. We come to conquer and reshape, to draw the shapes and sights of Ulthuan out of Elthin Arvan. Look at how you have transformed Athel Maraya, brought it up from the forest to become a glittering jewel.’

‘Have you no heart to thrill to the beauty of Athel Maraya?’ Salendor wondered. ‘Glistening like a tapestry of stars amid the splendour of the forest, towers and obelisks rising from the trees…’

‘It is beautiful,’ Liandra assured him. ‘It is as wondrous as Averlorn and Saphery, but it is the beauty of our land. The harmonies of this land are lost beneath that splendour. To build, first you must destroy.’

Salendor gave her a puzzled look. ‘It is a strange mood that moves you this night. I know it isn’t the prospect of battle that unsettles you. You are like me, an old warhorse who relishes the chance to strike back, to stand defiant before the enemy. Whoever they may be.’ His fingers toyed with the ring that now graced his forefinger. It was similar to the one that had been bestowed upon Lord Myrion and upon Prince Imladrik before him. ‘Is it this that disturbs you?’ he asked. ‘The thought that I am now in command of our armies? Do you think me so unfit for such a role?’

‘Never,’ Liandra said. ‘You are the best among us. Gelthar is too timid, Caerwal too vengeful. Aelis and Dlryll think only in terms of defence.’

‘And the Lady Liandra? What are her feelings?’ Salendor asked.

‘I am… I lack the confidence demanded of a leader,’ she sighed. ‘I have seen my people massacred and asked myself if I could have prevented it. I have seen friends killed and wondered if it was my fault.’ She looked across the ranks of elven spearmen filing down the trail. ‘To command, you can’t ask yourself these questions.’

Salendor stared down at the ring on his finger. ‘No,’ he told her, ‘if you would be more than a butcher, you must ask yourself these questions all the time. The difference is that you must balance what you might lose against what you might save. You must be ready to spend the lives of a hundred to preserve the lives of a thousand.’

Liandra shook her head. ‘Is that why we hunt Arhain-tosaith?’

‘Avenging Myrion is the king’s decree,’ Salendor said, ‘but it is far more than that. The dwarfs have been emboldened. They’re stirring from their holes again. Scouts say there’s a big mass of them gathering in the south, maybe thinking to lay siege to Tor Alessi again. Killing Arhain-tosaith might give them pause, allow us the time to get more troops from Ulthuan.’

The mage reached out and set her hand in Salendor’s, giving his fingers a gentle squeeze. ‘You have sought this dwarf a long time,’ she said. ‘Be certain of your motivations. Don’t let vengeance cloud your vision.’ He felt the shudder that passed through her as she gave the warning. ‘After revenge you are always left to count the cost.’

‘He is just a dwarf,’ Salendor said. The asur lord abruptly pulled away, his face going pale. A strange light was in his eyes, like wisps of scintillating starfire. Liandra was aware of the change for only the briefest instant and then it was gone, but in that instant she felt the aethyric harmonies rippling through Salendor’s spirit.

The elf lord had a reputation for his uncanny premonitions. Now Liandra had witnessed one of them as it actually came upon him. Salendor turned from her, ordering his standard bearer to wave his flag and summon his captains.

‘Halt the column!’ Salendor commanded, waving his captains away to see the order carried out. ‘Therial,’ he shouted, waiting until the Ellyrian knight rode over to him before saying anything more.

‘Bring your riders to the head of the column and remain with them,’ Salendor said, his voice so low that Liandra was barely able to hear him from where she was. ‘Keep a watchful eye for my signal. At my sign, spur your horses to full gallop and don’t stop for anything.’ A haunted expression gripped Salendor’s features as he added, ‘You won’t need to be told when to ride back.’ Bowing in his saddle, Therial hastened to obey his general.

‘What is it?’ Liandra whispered as she drew close to Salendor again. ‘What did you see?’

Salendor was rubbing at the Eagle Ring, his gaze faraway. ‘I saw the roles of hunter and prey reversed. Praise be to Asuryan that I’ve restored the proper balance.’

Therial’s knights moved through the column, the infantry spilling off the trail as they parted for the cavalry. Like a tide of steel, they closed ranks behind the riders. Only when the knights were at the head of the column did Salendor motion to his banner bearer to summon his captains once more. Except for Therial, the officers quickly returned.

‘I want a double-file of spears just behind the Ellyrians,’ Salendor told them. ‘Put your best archers behind the spears. Each bowman is to have an arrow nocked and ready. Implement these commands with discretion. When we resume the march, everything must be ready.’

Long minutes passed. Liandra burned to know what Salendor had foreseen, but she knew it would be useless to press him. Those unfamiliar with magic invariably made the mistake of believing portents and premonitions were quantifiable and readily described things, similar to the mundane senses they knew so well. Magic was different, far more nebulous and vague. A seer could know with certainty the substance of his prophecy but be absolutely at a loss to explain it. Liandra suspected that Salendor was gripped by the same dilemma – knowing what must be done but utterly unable to explain why.

At a gesture from Salendor, his standard bearer slowly moved his colours from side to side. The column began to march once more. At their head, Therial’s Ellyrian cavalry lunged forwards at full gallop.

The elven steeds had barely gone more than thirty yards before the ground opened up beneath their hooves. The speed of the chargers carried them over the abyss, though the frightened neighs of the animals echoed through the forest. Behind them, they left a yawning trench five yards across, a great black scar running lengthwise across the trail.

The true menace of the hole revealed itself an instant later. Shouts of ‘Khazuk!’ rose from beneath the earth. Dwarfs surged up from out of the ground, brandishing their axes and hammers. The deadfall had been intended to drag the front ranks of the asur down to their waiting warriors. Thwarted in that ambition, now the dawi lunged up to meet the enemy.

The dwarfs had expected their foe to be surprised by the sudden ambush. To be certain, many were, but enough recovered quickly to set their spears against the onrushing dwarfs to blunt the initial charge. Behind them, the archers loosed the arrows they’d held at the ready. Few of the missiles pierced the heavy dwarf armour, but enough of them struck home to further blunt the assault.

Commands now rang out across the elven ranks. The captains of those archer companies in the rear hurriedly organised their bowmen to loose volleys into the trench itself. Hundreds of arrows arced over the heads of the elves fighting at the fore of the column to slam down into the dwarfs surging up from the trench. Whatever casualties they inflicted, there seemed no end to the dwarfs. It was obvious that the trench connected to one of their ancient tunnel systems, an underground fortress holding untold numbers of the enemy.

Across the trench, galloping hard, came Therial and his knights. Rushing upon the rear of the dwarfs, the Ellyrians threw the short spears they carried to great effect, striking a goodly number of the foe. Still, the enemy refused to submit. Some of the dwarfs even sallied onto the other side of the trench in a futile effort to confront the Ellyrians. The knights simply galloped away, drawing their enemy after them down the trail until they were far from the safety and reinforcements of the trench. Then, Therial wheeled his knights around and rode the dwarfs down in a brutal cavalry charge.

The fighting at the head of the column only began to falter when Liandra and the other mages in Salendor’s army took a hand. Drawing upon the aethyr, the mages sent arcane fire raining down into the trench, scorching scores of the stubborn warriors as they tried to climb out of their holes. They seemed unimpressed by the magical flame, but when one of the other mages evoked a spell that caused the edges of the trench to crumble, it seemed a different matter. Almost at once, the dwarfs began to withdraw, hurrying back into their tunnels before the mages could collapse them on top of them.

When the fighting was over, Salendor hastened to the front of the column. Liandra knew how keenly his warrior’s blood had wanted to be there, fighting beside his troops, but the situation had called for a leader, not a swordsman. She watched as the elf lord had his soldiers drag the wounded dwarfs to one side. They’d be tended to and marched back to Athel Maraya as labour for the city’s defences, helping to raise the very walls that would defy their kinsmen.

The dead were dredged up from the trench and laid in a heap. The wounded dwarfs swore and cursed at the sight, but Salendor was not to be dissuaded. Carefully, he inspected each body before allowing it to be thrown back into the hole.

One of the dwarfs, unable to control himself any more, rushed past his guards and tried to throw himself at Salendor. Liandra spurred her horse forwards. The animal crashed into the dwarf, pitching him to the ground.

The dwarf’s armour was scorched and blackened from the fire, and as he struck the ground, the straps binding his masked helm broke free. Liandra had just drawn her sword, intending to cut down the enemy if he remained defiant. When she looked upon his unmasked face, however, she almost let her sword fall from her hand. The wounded dwarfs gave voice to a piteous moan while many of the elves, those who had been in the colonies long enough to recall the days of peace, gasped in horror.

The face of the dwarf was a ghastly patchwork of scars – old scars that told a woeful story. They were the marks left by a king’s imperious humour and the ungentle shears of his court. From cheek to chin, from nose to lip, the dwarf’s flesh was a grey confusion of cuts and gashes. Here and there a pathetic patch of white hair stood out among the wreckage, but for the most part what was present bore scant resemblance to flesh, much less a face.

‘Is this not a beard worthy of a war?’ the dwarf snarled at her in strained yet precise Eltharin.

The words were like a slap across the cheek to every elf who heard them. How many of them had joined in their king’s mockery when he derisively called this conflict ‘the War of the Beards’? Now, as they stared at Caledor’s handiwork, they felt shame at the jest.

Liandra forced herself to meet the dwarf’s gaze. ‘You… were the ambassador?’

‘I have no more words to waste on asur,’ Forek growled. ‘Strike and be damned!’

Liandra shook her head, slowly returning her sword to its sheath. She had come to despise and hate the dwarfs over the years, nearly as much as she did the druchii. Yet she knew enough about their ways to understand the enormity of the insult King Caledor had inflicted upon their ambassadors. Seeing it for herself only made the insult that much more atrocious.

‘I cannot undo what has been done to you,’ she said, ‘but I will not visit more hurt upon you.’

Fire blazed in Forek’s eyes as he heard Liandra’s words. ‘You already have,’ he snarled. ‘Your pity is a greater insult than the knives of your king!’

‘You have heard my lady’s decision,’ Lord Salendor declared, walking his horse towards the beardless dwarf. ‘Wag your tongue however you like – none here will raise their hand against you. Enough shame has been done to you.’

The dwarf rose to his feet. For a moment, it looked like he would try to lunge at Salendor, but as he stood he began to sway. Blood streamed from a wound in his side. The enraged vitality that had spurred his first effort was gone. ‘Your pity is as unwelcome as hers,’ Forek spat.

Salendor’s gaze hardened. ‘It is the last I shall bestow upon a dwarf,’ he said. The elf pointed to the heap of bodies stacked at the edge of the trench. ‘Tell me, is Arhain-tosaith among them?’

A grisly chuckle spilled from Forek. ‘Dead? No, the Lord of the Tunnels isn’t dead. He lives, Salendor of Athel Maraya. He lives and one day he will bring your city crumbling down about your ears.’

‘Tend the dawi’s wound and let him go,’ Salendor told his captains. He leaned forwards in his saddle, fixing Forek with his eyes.

‘If you see Arhain-tosaith,’ Salendor said, ‘warn him that death waits for him in Athel Maraya. That is not a threat. It is not a warning.’

Liandra felt her blood go cold when she heard Salendor tell Forek just what his words were.

‘It is a prophecy.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Fires of Hate and Prophecy
250th year of the reign of Caledor II

High King Gotrek Starbreaker sat upon his great Throne of Power. The king’s beard was still festooned with black beads of mourning even now, two and a half decades after his son was slain by King Caledor II. There were some who whispered that the king’s mind was lost to melancholy, that he would never stir himself from his chambers and lead the dawi into battle as he had during the great wars against the greenskins. Some championed more energetic kings like Varnuf of Karak Eight Peaks or Brynnoth of Barak Varr to be appointed High King of the Karaz Ankor.

Such malcontents, however, were careful to keep such whispers far from the halls of Karaz-a-Karak. Only a few minutes in Gotrek’s presence was enough to dissuade anyone from the idea that the brooding king was growing weak. Instead, the impression was that of a slumbering volcano, of a tremendous violence waiting to be unleashed.

It was a supreme effort of will on his part to restrain that violence. Every drop of blood, every strand of hair, every thread of sinew in his body wanted nothing but to throw the whole of his kingdom against the elgi. It would be so easy for Gotrek to abandon himself to a campaign of vindictive carnage. That he had the resolve to deny himself, to subdue his own impulses, was testament to his tremendous willpower.

Only when the time was right, when the purpose was clear, could he call the whole of the Karaz Ankor to war. A purpose that served the whole of the kingdom, not the grudges laid out in the Dammaz Kron. Not the wounded soul of a grieving father.

Gotrek laid his hand on the sword resting across his lap. He could feel the subtle energies coursing through the blade, strange and somehow hostile. A fitting reaction from elven magic to the touch of a dwarfish king.

The High King studied the dwarfs gathered before his throne. Morek Furrowbrow had presented the elf sword to him, but he wasn’t deceived. He knew the gift was from his nephew Morgrim. No, he corrected himself, from his heir, Morgrim, now that Snorri was gone.

Morgrim was there beside Morek, arrayed in full armour as though Gotrek needed to be reminded of what his nephew wanted. He was a hound straining at the leash, desperate to be set loose. He yearned to return to battle. The question that lingered in Gotrek’s mind was what he’d do with such an opportunity.

‘Your wound still vexes you?’ Gotrek asked.

‘I am fully recovered, my liege,’ Morgrim replied. Gotrek knew it was a lie. He’d seen the stiffness in the thane when he’d bowed before the throne.

Gotrek stroked the captured blade, feeling its cold metal against his skin. ‘The symbolism of your gift isn’t lost on me.’ He raised his hand, stifling Morgrim’s protest. ‘Do not argue that it is Runelord Morek’s present. He may have reforged it, but it was you who took it from the elgi.’ The king leaned forwards, forcing himself to face the third dwarf kneeling before the throne.

The metal mask and golden beard of Forek’s helm was a reminder to Gotrek that sometimes a king could ask too much of his subjects, that there were some sacrifices that simply couldn’t be asked of anyone. When he spoke to Forek, Gotrek’s voice was slow and measured, carefully strained of any hint of guilt that would be unbecoming of a king.

‘You bring news from Brok Stonefist?’ Gotrek asked. It was no secret that Forek had been campaigning with the energetic Ungdrin Ankor Rik. The Lord of the Tunnels had been engaged in almost constant battle with the elgi, from small skirmishes to assaults against Tor Lithanel and Sith Rionnasc. Brok’s slaying of the elf general Myrion had done much to embolden the dwarfs, but Gotrek wondered if it had really been worth it. Myrion had been replaced by Salendor, an elgi who knew both the land and the dawi, qualities his predecessor had lacked. Salendor had proven to be ten times the foe Myrion had been, exacting a terrible cost from the outlying mines and settlements with his lightning raids. This was an elf lord striving not for glory but victory, and he was cautious enough to be satisfied with small conquests that cost his people little in the way of lives.

‘Tromm, my liege,’ Forek addressed the king. The eyes that looked out from behind his mask were as sharp as daggers and Gotrek felt relieved that such a magnitude of hate was reserved for the elgi. ‘Brok has conceived a plan that will end the menace of Salendor once and for all.’

Gotrek’s expression hardened. Brok had become obsessed with killing Salendor ever since the elf lord’s victory over him at the Battle of Blind River. Many times over the years the two had brought their armies into conflict. The bitterness and rivalry of their generals seemed to flow down into their troops. More vicious fighting in the war had yet to be witnessed. Still, despite the ferocity, despite the times when the two generals had actually met in combat, both of them yet lived. Some doom joined the two and seemed to be preserving them until the moment of its fulfilment.

‘Brok has promised the death of Salendor many times,’ Gotrek observed. ‘I have yet to be told that the elgi’s head hangs in the halls of Karak Azul.’

Morgrim rose to his feet. ‘This time he intends to assault Athel Maraya itself,’ he said. ‘Forek has explained the plan to me. It is a sound one.’

‘Athel Maraya has been attacked before… and by the same general,’ Gotrek cautioned. ‘The losses to the dawi were heavy and the elgi city still stands.’

‘Brok didn’t have the troops to penetrate the defences before,’ Morgrim stated. ‘Now he has King Varnuf and the army of Karak Eight Peaks supporting him. Enough hammers to tear down Salendor’s walls.’ An ambitious gleam came into his eye as he met Gotrek’s gaze. ‘If he had the might of Karaz-a-Karak behind him, he would be certain to accomplish his purpose.’

‘And who would lead our people?’ Gotrek wondered.

Morgrim stiffened. ‘I thought that I would command any contingent you were to send.’

The High King pulled at his beard, feeling the beads slip between his fingers. ‘No,’ he declared. Before Morgrim could protest, he motioned the thane to be still. ‘You will not command merely a contingent. Brok is obsessed with the grudges he has laid against Salendor. Varnuf is ambitious and power-hungry – he cares only about seeing my crown on his head. Neither of them will bring our people the victory they need. You will be in overall command of the combined army. If Brok and Varnuf cannot agree to this, then you will march back here with your contingent.’

Morgrim’s face brightened. ‘Then I have your leave…’

Gotrek stood from his throne.

‘The time for mourning is done,’ he said. ‘Now is the time for blood. Now is the time for reckoning.’ He looked at Ifulvin, the sword lying at his feet after it had fallen from his lap. ‘Now is the time for vengeance,’ he declared as he stooped and retrieved the sword. He tossed the weapon to Morgrim.

‘It is time you returned that blade to the elgi… one throat at a time.’

Athel Maraya stood in the midst of the Great Forest, what the elves had named the Loren Lacoi. Once it had been more beautiful than anything the asur had dared to build in Elthin Arvan. Its towers and minarets rose among the trees like colossal flowers, their graceful arches and broad balconies accentuating rather than diminishing their arboreal surroundings. Ranks of slender ash trees lined the main thoroughfare and the streets were laid with blocks of agate as smooth and polished as river stones. Beds of flowers were everywhere, sporting an array of colours beyond the limitations of nature, enhanced by careful hybridisation and the even less mundane enhancements of magic.

Ruby and sapphire and emerald shone from the window frames and doorways of each house, nestled among intricate carvings and frescoes. Tile murals adorned every courtyard and intersection, each vibrant scene depicting some tranquil moment from asur legend and lore. The lamps, wondrous cages of crystal and silver, glittered like a million diamonds when night fell upon the city, the illuminating enchantments bound within those cages making Athel Maraya shine more wondrously than the stars in the sky.

Liandra turned away from the marble balustrade, watching as a liveried servant stepped out onto the balcony. Revenial had been Lord Salendor’s own steward before he was sent to attend her. The pale wine standing on the silver tray he carried was a further gift from the elf lord, drawn from his own cellars. She recognised the dusky colour to the bottle and knew it to be from one of the early vintages.

Revenial stopped a short distance from his mistress and proffered her the crystal goblet resting beside the bottle.

‘Thank you,’ Liandra said after taking a brief sip. Wine, like most beautiful things, had to be taken slowly to truly be savoured. All too soon the beauty could be lost.

‘Something disturbs you this evening?’ Revenial asked. The steward had always been forthright with Salendor, a habit he’d carried over when he entered Liandra’s service.

Liandra took no insult from the servant’s familiarity. ‘I was thinking about how beautiful Athel Maraya was. Look at it now, marred by the necessities of war. Barracks and fortifications break the symmetry. Flower gardens uprooted to plant crops, trees cut down to form the frameworks for ballistae and chariots, jewels plucked from the houses to buy weapons and armour. And that grotesque stone wall that coils around the city like some titanic serpent. It is a hideous, brutish thing, as hard and ugly as the enemy it was raised to oppose.’

‘Beauty is always the first victim of war,’ Revenial said. ‘It was much the same when Malekith’s traitors raged across Tiranoc. People forget beauty when the enemy is near.’ He looked away from his mistress, gazing out towards the walls Liandra had called grotesque. ‘We learned when fighting Malekith that if you try to save everything then you end up losing it all.’

Liandra turned and the softness drained from her eyes as she looked out at the walls and the army encamped beyond them. For three months the enemy had been laying siege to Athel Maraya. A great host of dwarfs had chopped and burned their way through the forest to menace Salendor’s city. The dawi had hurled boulders into its buildings with their catapults, sent cauldrons of boiling pitch raining down on the streets, loosed spears from their ballistae at the high towers.

The elves had returned their attentions in kind. Archers sent volley upon volley flying out from behind the walls to break any dwarf effort to bring ladders and towers towards the city. Mages unleashed arcane malevolence upon the field, withering warriors in their heavy armour with bolts of wizardly lightning or cooking them where they stood with blasts of sorcerous flame. In the sky above, great eagles and griffons prowled the battlefield, spying out the movement and disposition of the enemy.

‘He is down there,’ Liandra said, feeling a wave of cold hate course through her body. ‘The eagle riders saw his standard. Our enemy is no less than Elfdoom himself, the same animal who killed Prince Imladrik.’ She shook her fist at the dwarf warriors. ‘If I had Vranesh right now, I could fly down there and burn those lice-ridden savages.’

‘You have done what you could, my lady,’ Revenial assured her. ‘You convinced Lord Salendor to send an eagle rider to Tor Alessi and request the aid of Lord Teranion and his dragons.’

‘My mistake may have been to allow Lord Salendor to compose the message,’ Liandra said. ‘I fear he did not impress upon Tor Alessi the gravity of the situation here. He is overconfident, he believes that Athel Maraya can fend off this siege.’

Revenial nodded. ‘He clings to the prophecy. He believes only Arhain-tosaith can break Athel Maraya. Without the Lord of the Tunnels to lead them, he believes the dwarfs can never defile his city.’

Raising her staff, Liandra sent a bolt of aethyric energy smashing into a boulder flying uncomfortably near to her tower. The magical assault reduced the missile into a shower of pebbles, the tiny stones clattering ineffectually against the rooftops below. ‘Prophecy has a way of cheating those who trust in it most,’ she warned Revenial. Salendor might be secure in his belief that only Brok Stonefist could despoil his city, but Liandra was confident that Morgrim was equally capable of the feat.

What she didn’t understand was why the thane hadn’t moved with all of his forces. Thus far, what Morgrim had done amounted to a series of probes, thrusts to test the defences. The real attack was yet to come.

Beyond the walls of Athel Maraya, Morgrim listened to the reports of his thanes. The barrage from the siege weapons was proving ineffectual. He didn’t need the thanes to tell him that. Catapults, bolt throwers, they’d been brought against the city before. And, just as before, they hadn’t been enough to overcome Lord Salendor and his city. No, it would need a different track to force a way into the city.

‘Bring what ammunition you need from the quarry,’ Morgrim told the artillerists. During the first siege against Athel Maraya, the dwarfs had excavated a wide expanse of the Loren Lacoi to provide the stone for their catapults. That open wound in the forest was still a rich source of supply for the dwarf war machines. ‘Detach the labour you need from the clan dwarf regiments but you are to take no levies from the hammerers and Ironbreakers or from the crossbows.’ Morgrim dismissed the artillerists from his tent with a wave of his hand. When they were gone, he turned to Morek Furrowbrow.

‘They could lob the Everpeak itself at that city and I think we’d be no closer to conquering it,’ Morgrim grumbled.

‘Your plan demands the pretence,’ Morek reminded him. ‘It is a good plan, sound as the halls of Karaz-a-Karak. Give it the time it needs.’

Morgrim scowled. ‘Time isn’t our friend, and you know it well. The drakk are still licking their wounds after Kazad Mingol, but we can’t count on them staying away. Every day we gain is a gift from Valaya.’ He clenched his fist and pounded it against the table where his maps and charts were arrayed. ‘Brok Stonefist had better deliver on his promises.’

Morek scratched at his brow, giving Morgrim a worried stare. ‘You doubt the Lord of the Tunnels?’

‘I think he may be a victim of his own legend,’ Morgrim said. ‘Those of my troops who have done a turn as miners say he should have excavated his tunnels a month ago. I can understand caution, trying to keep the elgi from discovering the diggings, but this…’

‘Have you spoken to Brok? Asked him about the delay?’

‘It’s always the same with him,’ Morgrim declared. ‘He assures me that his excavations will bring down the walls exactly where we need them to go down. Then he launches into a tirade about Salendor and how his personal honour demands he kill the elgi.’

‘You would expect any less from a dawi lord?’ Morek wondered.

There was a grave look in Morgrim’s eyes. ‘I think Brok has become obsessed. There’s a fever in him as destructive as gold madness.’ He shook his fist at the ground, as though to express his frustration to the Lord of the Tunnels somewhere below his feet. ‘Ancestors forgive me, but I wonder if I’ve placed my whole army at the mercy of a bleeding zaki.’

The outburst had no sooner left Morgrim’s tongue than a dirt-covered messenger was standing at the entrance of the tent. The dwarf bowed when the general looked in his direction.

‘Tromm, lord,’ the dwarf said. ‘I bring tidings from Brok Stonefist. He wishes to inform you that you may begin your attack at your pleasure. When you do, he will see to it that the walls are broken.’

‘Tell Brok he may expect my command within the next day,’ Morgrim told the runner. He waited until the messenger was gone before turning towards Morek. ‘When the artillerists get back with their rock, we’ll be ready.’

‘You don’t seem pleased about that,’ Morek said.

A rumbling sigh shook Morgrim. ‘Brok says he’s ready and maybe he is, but I can’t escape the feeling that I’ve put too much trust in him.’

From the balcony of her tower, Liandra watched as another volley of arrows rose from behind the walls, striking a regiment of armoured dwarfs trying to steer an iron-headed ram towards one of the gates. A few of the dawi fell to the barrage, but most were able to scramble into cover behind the ram’s immense frame of fresh timber. In taking shelter, however, the dwarfs left the ram itself vulnerable. Unmoving, it presented a prime target for elven magic.

‘Shield your eyes,’ Liandra warned Revenial. The steward hurriedly covered his face as Liandra raised her staff to the sky. She focused her mind on the swirling currents of the aethyr. It seemed more exacting and difficult to fixate upon those eldritch patterns than it once had been. All the familiar skeins seemed to unravel a little more each time. She might have laid the impression down to her imagination, or a diminishment of her powers after the death of Vranesh, but other mages had confided to her their own growing difficulties practising their craft. It was as if the violence of the war were somehow throwing echoes into the aethyr, disturbing the old harmonies.

Fiercely, Liandra chided herself for her lack of concentration. She could fret over thaumatological theories later. At the moment she had dwarfs to kill. Drawing down the magical essences demanded of her conjuration, she focused them into the head of her staff, letting the energy build. At length, a blast of blinding light leapt from her staff, hurtling down from the tower with meteoric violence. The battering ram was engulfed in flame, the timbers crackling and popping as the bark crumbled from the wood. The dwarfs crowded around the ram shrieked, many of them stumbling away, their clothes and beards aflame. Asur sharpshooters hidden on the walls picked them off one by one, stifling their screams with arrows to breast and brain.

‘Magnificent,’ Revenial crowed when he looked out and saw the havoc Liandra’s spell had unleashed.

‘It’s a start,’ she replied. Liandra could still feel some sense of satisfaction watching dwarfs die. It was easy to remember the first attack on Kor Vanaeth and the fall of Oeragor, even the early sieges against Tor Alessi. The dwarfs had given her ample reason to hate them. Why, then, did she feel a sense of guilt that she did hate them so?

‘Khazuk! Khazuk! Khazuk!’ The fierce war-cry of the dwarfs rose from the besiegers in a great roar. It was more than simple belligerence. There was a note of jubilation and triumph in the cry. Revenial and Liandra exchanged a confused look.

‘What do they have to be so happy about?’ Revenial wondered.

Liandra looked towards the Diamond Tower where Salendor was coordinating his defence of the city, wondering if one of the boulders the attackers were lobbing into the city had somehow struck the crystal-roofed tower.

It wasn’t the tower that had roused the dwarfs. The cause of their shouting was much closer. The first Liandra and Revenial were aware of it was the tremor they felt pass through the tower. Some instinct drew their gaze away from their own surroundings and out towards the walls. They both gasped in amazement at what they saw.

The walls of Athel Maraya, those grand, colossal fortifications, were swaying and sagging, creaking from side to side like a ship at sea. Dust and rubble trickled down their sides, great clumps of mortar crackling down onto the regiments of archers posted behind them. Some of the sentries on the walls clung to the crenellations, casting aside their weapons in their desperate efforts to retain their footing. Others were thrown, cast off the walls like horsemen from the back of an unbroken stallion. Screaming, they crashed amongst their own comrades, flung at them like an armoured bludgeon and leaving little clumps of broken soldiery all along the perimeter.

Soon a deafening rumble and crash rocked Athel Maraya. The swaying walls came toppling inwards, their immense bulk pulverising soldiers, reducing them to gory smears in the squares and streets. The collapsing walls obliterated the buildings behind them, burying hundreds of elves beneath tonnes of rubble.

Liandra’s eyes blazed with outrage. ‘Sappers!’ she shouted. ‘The filthy burrowers set part of their army to excavate beneath the walls and bring them down. That was why there weren’t any dawi mages among the besiegers – their runesmiths were focused entirely on hiding the diggers from our divinations and scrying.’

Revenial turned a terrified face towards Liandra. ‘What can we do? The dwarfs are in the city. They’re through the walls!’ He pointed a trembling hand towards the nearest breach.

Looking at the broken walls, Liandra could appreciate the enormity of the attack and the precision with which the dwarfs had wrought such havoc. The walls had been brought down not in one or two places, but six. They’d been sent crashing inwards in each instance, spilling across those structures closest to the breaches and burying whatever defenders might have been able to immediately reach the gaps. Never did the falling walls topple in such a way that they choked any of the wide thoroughfares that stretched across the city. The streets had been left clear for the invaders.

Hidden trenches leading up to the broken walls suddenly disgorged filthy, dirt-coated mobs of dwarfs armed with massive hammers and sharp-headed picks. The very miners who had brought down the walls were now the first to rush into the gaps, defending the dust-choked heaps of rubble until the regular dawi warriors could exploit the breaches and pour into the vulnerable city.

‘What can we do?’ Liandra threw Revenial’s question back at him. ‘We can fight and show these brutes that we won’t be cowed by their tricks.’

Liandra loosed her magic against the nearest of the breaches. She immolated a burly miner just as he started to pull his pick from the skull of an unfortunate elf swordsman. The screaming dwarf pitched forwards onto his face, blazing away like some obscene candle. The horror-struck dwarfs around him backed away, but Liandra was of no mind to be merciful. Again and again she set her magic against the dawi, sending their burning bodies tumbling down the jumbled debris. A few elf militia scrambled up the rubble, intending to hold the breach until regular troops could be brought up. Quickly they learned how hopeless the effort would be. Dwarf crossbows dropped two of them and wounded a third. Reluctantly, they fell back, conceding the breach to the invaders.

‘There! One of the animals is firing the houses.’ Revenial was jumping up and down, trying to draw his mistress’s attention to the scene unfolding a hundred yards away. Liandra could see a red-bearded dwarf wearing a horned helm playing a lit torch across the wood carvings adorning the doorway of an elven home. The brute chuckled as the carvings began to smoulder and catch fire. Pointing her staff at the vandal, she turned her hate and disgust for the dwarf into a flaming spear of energy that seared through his armour and left him a charred mess strewn across the doorstep of the home he’d set aflame.

It was a fruitless gesture. Liandra could see more and more dwarfs pouring into the city now, many of them bearing torches and pots of pitch. Trees were soon transformed into grisly pillars of flame, flowerbeds became fiery fields. Homes spilled smoke into the sky as their inhabitants burned and screamed. The dwarfs weren’t interested in plunder or captives now. This attack had only one purpose in mind: complete destruction. She thought of Kor Vanaeth and what the city had been reduced to when the dwarfs were finished with it.

‘Khaine’s blood, there are so many of them,’ Revenial cursed. ‘Even your magic can’t kill them all.’

‘I won’t know until I try,’ Liandra growled, raising her staff once more, straining to draw more of the elusive aethyr to her spell.

As the magic swelled within her, Liandra felt the echo of a familiar sensation rush through her. Automatically, she turned her face skywards. There, soaring down upon the stricken city were two of Lord Teranion’s precious dragons. The great beasts bellowed in rage as they flew above the burning streets, the primordial roar causing windows to shake in their frames. The dragons made one pass, allowing their riders a view of the overall condition of the battle.

‘The dragons have come,’ Revenial cheered, giving voice to the exultation racing through Liandra’s mind. The dragons had come and now it was the dwarfs’ turn to burn.

The huge monsters were diving down, dragon fire billowing from their fanged maws. They struck the dwarfs with almost elemental fury, boiling hundreds of them, melting the armour from their bodies and reducing their flesh to ash.

‘There’s little more we can do here,’ Liandra told Revenial. ‘Now that the dwarfs are inside the walls, our place is with Lord Salendor.’ As she followed the steward down the steps of her tower, Liandra wondered about Salendor. She wondered if he was still clinging to the prophecy now that Athel Maraya was on fire and Arhain-tosaith was nowhere to be seen.

The air within the tunnel was foul with dust and the smoke of lanterns. Forek found it nearly impossible to breathe, the temptation to remove his masked helm mounting with each gasp he tried to draw into his lungs. The memory of his humiliation when the elgi rinn knocked him down and exposed his shame was too painful to submit to the temptation. He’d choke before he allowed himself to be disgraced like that again.

A cruel smile formed beneath his mask as the steelbeard recalled how he’d turned elgi pity against them. When he returned to Brok Stonefist, he told the thane what he’d heard. The captives taken by Salendor were to be put to work strengthening and expanding the walls around his city. That had set a cunning plan in Brok’s brain, one that had taken years to bring to fruition.

Each time he fought Salendor, a few more of Brok’s warriors were taken captive. But some of those who became prisoners did so by design. In ones and twos, Brok had let a few of his miners fall into Salendor’s hands. As they worked on the walls, the miners left signs and marks only other members of the miners’ guild could read. Signs that told exactly where sappers should dig to exploit the minute weaknesses the dwarfs had connived to engineer and bring the great walls of Athel Maraya crashing down.

Forek had felt the tremors as the walls fell. Indeed, for several ghastly moments it had seemed the tunnel he was in would collapse, such was the violence of the quake. But the tremor had passed and the tunnel remained stable. Brok’s miners knew their business and they’d had a long time to turn their profession into a weapon of war.

The Lord of the Tunnels had only disclosed some of his plan to Morgrim Elgidum. While he provided his sappers to undermine the walls, Brok neglected to tell his commander about the other part of his strategy. Forek suspected that Brok was worried about what would happen if Morgrim were to learn that the thane was using the whole dawi army as a cover for his own, private, attack.

The tunnel Brok had his best miners digging was far longer than those that brought down the walls. From the edge of the surrounding forest, he’d ordered it dug clear into the heart of Athel Maraya. While the rest of the army fought for the outskirts of the city, Brok intended to seize its heart. It was there, he knew, he would find Lord Salendor.

‘Enough!’ Brok’s voice echoed through the tunnel. He pushed his way down the line until he was at the front. Around his arm was a coil of thin cord that he had played out ever since the miners had started to dig. Knots in the cord measured the distance. Unless something had gone wrong, the tunnel should have reached the spot he wanted. To be sure, Brok took a long spike of steel and stabbed it up through the roof of the tunnel, piercing the surface above. Hastily, he drew the spike back and thrust a curved tube of bronze into the hole. It was an ingenious device crafted by the engineers’ guild, two mirrors set into the angles of the tube reflecting the image of whatever the opposite end was trained upon.

Brok stroked his long beard and gave a satisfied hiss. ‘I can see the Diamond Tower,’ he said. Withdrawing the bronze pipe, he turned to the expectant miners all around him. ‘We’re as near as we need to be, lads. Open her up!’

The miners set to the task with an almost bestial fury. Their picks and hammers tore at the roof of the tunnel, tearing a wide fissure. Dirt and the broken tiles from a plaza spilled down on them, but the dwarfs didn’t pause in their labour. Inch by inch, the hole they’d made widened.

As light poured down into the tunnel, the warriors who had followed behind the miners came hurrying forwards. Rundin, the fierce Dragonslayer, was the first to leap onto the pick handles the miners held crosswise and be flung up onto the surface. Forek was right behind him, as eager to be out of the stifling tunnel as he was to confront the elgi.

The steelbeard found himself standing in a plaza, the intersection of two tree-lined streets. Great towers rose in every direction, thin and dainty constructions as dwarfs reckoned things, but with a gravity-defying liquidity to their broad arches and engorged spires. Bridges stretched between many of the towers, twisting and flowing above the streets. Forek saw elf bowmen on some of those bridges and hurriedly unslung the shield strapped across his back. He had no fear of fighting the elgi, but he didn’t think an arrow in his gizzard would make for a momentous death either.

Rundin seemed to have no such concerns. With a roar, the half-naked skarrenawi charged at a group of elven spearmen who had the misfortune to be marching past the plaza when the dwarfs broke through. They were still in shock at the incredible trespass. Before they could recover, Rundin was among them. One elf fell with his belly opened from hip to rib. A second collapsed in a mire of his own entrails. The third was able to bring up his spear in a futile effort to block Rundin’s axe only to have the blade chop through the haft of his weapon and split his breastbone. The murderous carnage broke the discipline of the others. Shouting in alarm, they fled down one of the streets, Rundin and his axe hot on their heels.

The commotion drew the notice of the nearest archers. The bowmen hurriedly nocked arrows and began to shoot at the dwarfs emerging from the tunnel. One arrow glanced off Forek’s shield, while another came so near to striking Brok that it became caught in the loose folds of mail hanging from his arm.

‘Zonzharr!’ Brok cried out as he ducked and tried to make himself less of a target for the archers on the bridges. At his call, the flow of warriors being sent up from the tunnel stopped. Instead, the next dwarfs raised up from the hole were miners. Unlike their comrades, these didn’t have candles spitted onto their spiked helms or lanterns fastened to their belts. They didn’t bear pick or hammer. Instead, what they carried were crooked metal rods with a strip of leather stretched between the bifurcated end. Into this loop of leather the miners hurriedly set fist-sized globes of iron. A short length of fuse fizzled at the top of each sphere. Hastily, the miners whirled their rods above their heads, swinging them faster and faster. One of them collapsed as an elf arrow struck him, the globe rolling away from his fallen weapon until one of the warriors rushed over and hastily snuffed out the fuse.

The other miners brought the rods to a sudden stop. The momentum they’d built up sent the iron globes hurtling away, up towards the bridges. It was only a moment before the bombs detonated. Filled with zonzharr, a devastating blasting powder, the iron globes wrought brutal havoc among the archers. When a bomb struck one of the bridges, the span was ripped from its moorings and sent crashing to the street below. When one detonated above the bridge, it sent a shower of sparks and flame streaming onto the elves. A few went wide of the mark, crashing instead into the towers themselves, setting fire to the woodwork and nearby trees. Only seldom did they stray, however, for the miners were old hands at slinging zonzharr in this fashion to blast rock from the upper reaches of Angaz Baragdum’s open-pit mines.

In short order, the archers were killed or driven into retreat. Brok called his warriors to him, those who had so far emerged from the pit. He wasn’t willing to wait for his full force. Like some hunting beast, he seemed to smell Salendor nearby. He wasn’t about to let the elf lord slip through his fingers this time.

‘We’re for the Diamond Tower,’ he shouted down into the tunnel. ‘Anybody who’s coming better get his arse moving! The rest of you bring up pitch and oil. I want this elgi warren burning so bright that Caledor himself will be able to see it from his perfumed throne in elfland!’

The Lord of the Tunnels didn’t hesitate a moment longer. Brandishing his axe overhead, he pointed it towards the Diamond Tower. With a fierce cry of ‘Khazuk!’, his warriors charged after him.

Forek glanced back at the burning towers and trees. In the distance he could see other fires raging in the outskirts. Overhead, a dragon swept past, flames billowing from its maw as it flew towards the walls and Morgrim’s besiegers.

Even if the elves somehow managed to repulse them now, there was nothing that could save their city.

Athel Maraya was going to burn.

The streets were a confusion of terror and bloodshed. Liandra’s armour was filthy with the gore of the dwarfs she’d cut down with her sword and the dying elves she’d briefly lingered over. There was only so much her magic could do. In the close quarters of the streets a blade was faster than a conjuration, as the dawi had discovered for themselves. Revenial, armed with his own blade, proved a capable fighter in his own right, claiming six dwarfs during the escape from Liandra’s tower.

The asur were fighting for every house and every tower, desperately trying to protect their homes and the families cowering inside them. The dawi were equally determined, stubbornly fighting for every inch, heedless of what it cost them. She’d witnessed dwarf warriors crawling over their own dead to force their way into a tower only to put the building to the torch.

Fire burned everywhere. The combined malignity of the dwarf arsonists and the dragons was turning entire streets into infernos. Worse, the flames were blazing away so fiercely that they were creating terrible winds that howled and raged, spreading the fires faster and farther than either dragon or dwarf. Liandra had seen a horrible thing, like a whirlwind fashioned from flame, rise up from the pyre of a field to dance across the district, burning all it touched.

‘The Librarium Lacoi!’ Revenial howled in a cry of anguish as they hurried through the streets. Liandra froze and turned to stare at the ghastly sight that had overwhelmed her servant. The Librarium Lacoi was engulfed in flame, its skylights collapsing from its tall roofs, its great spire toppling into the conflagration of its main structure. ‘Nothing can rebuild Athel Maraya now,’ Revenial moaned. ‘Even if we win this war, nothing can restore what we’ve lost.’

‘Then we make the dawi pay,’ Liandra told him, seizing his shoulder and urging him onwards. ‘We make them suffer as we’ve suffered.’ Prodding him ahead of her, they started towards the Aspen Road, the vast parkland that stretched across the city like a belt. They both froze when they saw that the trees were on fire.

Revenial watched the flames as they spread down the belt. ‘If that fire isn’t quenched, it will consume the outlying districts and then spread to the very core of Athel Maraya.’

‘We’ll be ringed by fire from within and without,’ Liandra observed. ‘Every asur in the city will be destroyed.’

A desperate light crept into Revenial’s eyes. ‘High in the Diamond Tower there’s a bell,’ he said. ‘Lord Salendor had it placed there after the last siege. When it is sounded, it will be the dirge for Athel Maraya. If the bell is struck, it is the order for every elf in the city to abandon it and flee into the forest.’

‘Then we have to reach the tower and ring the bell,’ Liandra decided, thankful that they were already headed in that direction.

Revenial shook his head. ‘Only Lord Salendor can authorise striking the bell,’ he said.

Liandra seized him by his tunic. ‘He should have done so already,’ she snapped. ‘That he hasn’t done so is proof enough that he’s still clinging to delusions about prophecy. His people – your people – are all going to die because of him!’ She gestured to the spreading flames. ‘There’s no time to argue with him even if we find him. I’m ordering the evacuation. If it comes to it, I’ll make my excuses before the Council of Five.’

Revenial nodded his head slowly. ‘I will take you to the bell, but you must be the one to strike it.’ He looked down at his hands, shame in his expression. ‘I have served Lord Salendor too long to betray him now.’

‘Lead the way, then,’ Liandra said. ‘Leave the rest to me.’

Running down side streets and narrow pathways among the copses and groves so far untouched by the flames, Liandra and Revenial were able to avoid the fighting in the outlying districts. The dwarfs were too intent on tearing down everything in their path to bother overmuch about a few stray elves.

As they neared the core of Athel Maraya, Liandra was surprised to find fires raging among the towers and trees. At first she imagined that it had been caused by the dragons, some error made by either reptile or rider. Then she saw the dwarfs rushing about the buildings, giving battle to the asur who tried to oppose them, setting fires when their advance went uncontested.

‘The beasts are between us and the tower,’ Revenial swore.

A solid block of dwarf warriors was marching across the broad bridge that spanned the Aspen Road. Among them, Liandra saw a figure who had become infamous among the elves: the long-bearded, stout-bellied Brok Stonefist, Arhain-tosaith himself. How the dwarf lord had come to rage and ravage at the heart of Athel Maraya when Morgrim’s forces were still fighting past the defences, Liandra didn’t know. At the moment it didn’t matter. All she knew was that he was here and the effect his presence would have on Salendor.

‘We have to find another way,’ Liandra said.

Revenial was quiet a moment, then cast a worried look at the Aspen Road itself. Grimly he pointed to the defile, already thick with smoke. ‘Maybe we can make it across,’ he said. Shunning the bridge with its burden of dwarfs, they climbed down into the smoke, flitting among the aspens as they hurried to the other side of the narrow defile. Towards the east, they could see the fires of the outskirts spreading down the Aspen Road, roaring like some daemonic horror as they devoured the trees. If the wind shifted, the conflagration could spread to the centre of Athel Maraya in a matter of minutes.

Liandra was climbing up the slope at the other side of the defile when she saw asur soldiers marching out onto the bridge to meet Brok’s advance. Her heart felt like ice when she saw Salendor leading his troops. The elf lord’s banner snapped in the fiery breeze, letting his foe know exactly who it was he faced. Neither bolt nor arrow rose from either of the converging forces. There was too much hate between these foes to take any satisfaction from killing at distance. Only the play of sword and axe would quench the fury of these warriors.

‘Lord Salendor,’ Revenial gasped. Liandra had to grab her servant to keep him from joining his old master as he marched towards his hated enemy.

‘The bell,’ she reminded Revenial. ‘We have to sound the evacuation.’

One of the dragons flew overhead, diving towards Brok’s dwarfs. The flash of Salendor’s banner warned the dragon rider off, alerting him that this wasn’t his fight. The drake veered off at the last instant, the gout of fire it had been about to send into the dwarfs instead igniting the rooftops of tiered manors and palaces.

Liandra and Revenial hastened to reach the elf-held side of the bridge. The dismissal of the dragon told her all she needed to know about Salendor’s intentions. He was fixated upon the premonition, the prophecy that joined his doom with that of the dwarf. As he brought his household guard into battle with Brok’s warriors, Liandra knew he wasn’t fighting for victory. He was fighting to answer the demands of fate.

As they reached the other side of the defile, Revenial turned to Liandra. ‘Help Lord Salendor if you can,’ he told her. ‘I will attend to the bell.’ The steward turned and hurried down one of the desolate streets, soon lost among the ruins of Athel Maraya.

‘I’ll try,’ Liandra promised the departed elf, already knowing her words to be empty. She doubted if it was in anyone’s power to free Salendor from the path he was set upon.

The wind shifted, sending the fire roaring down the Aspen Road. Beams and tiles from the buildings the dragon had set aflame came crashing down upon the bridge, slowing the rush of combat as elf and dwarf alike tried to dodge the burning debris.

Only the two warriors at the heart of the conflict took no notice of the fire and smoke. Even now, Salendor was resplendent in his silvered armour and silken cloak, a mild enchantment keeping the grime of war away from his vestment. His sword shone as it slashed and thrust, wove and parried. There was an expression of regret stamped upon his noble features, but in his eyes shone a fierce determination.

His foe was no less determined, but it was there that the similarities ended. Brok’s armour was black from soot and ash, his beard stained a dull charcoal colour. The axe the dwarf swung was heavy, ponderous and clumsy beside the nimble elven blade. Again and again, Salendor’s sword darted past it to slash against the grimy mail that guarded the thane’s body. If the axe was less nimble, it had the benefit of greater strength. The few times Brok pressed home his attacks, Salendor was knocked back, staggered by even the most glancing blow. There was no regret or misgiving in Brok’s face, only a primitive, bestial sort of fury.

Liandra cried out to Salendor, begging him to withdraw. She pleaded with him to save himself, to defy whatever doom he imagined he’d seen. He was a valiant warrior and a great leader. The asur needed lords of his calibre to lead them in all the battles to come, to avenge the destruction of Athel Maraya. Members of Salendor’s household guard who’d already withdrawn from the fight took up Liandra’s entreaties, urging him to end the senseless duel.

Through the air, the dull, dolorous note of the bell in the Diamond Tower rang out, sounding the evacuation of Athel Maraya’s survivors. Revenial had honoured his word and broken faith with his old master. Liandra felt shame that her promise to the steward wasn’t so easily discharged. The tolling of the bell seemed to antagonise the dwarf artillery beyond the walls. While it sounded, no less than half a dozen boulders were sent hurtling at the edifice. Several struck true and with the sixth, the tower came apart like a rotten tooth, raining chunks of rubble down upon Salendor’s estate. Somewhere in that debris would be the body of Revenial and the bell.

The fires roared closer. Now burning branches and leaves were being blown onto the bridge, forcing still more of the dwarfs and elves to disengage and withdraw to opposite ends of the span. Liandra was surprised to see a great body of dwarfs already gathered there, doubly so when she recognised Morgrim and the dwarf ambassador among them. Like the elves around her, the dwarfs were crying out to their champion, urging him to withdraw from the fight.

Like Salendor, Brok ignored every entreaty. His world had narrowed down so that it consisted only of the elf lord who stood before him. Smoke and fire, the burning debris crashing around him, none of it mattered. All he saw was Salendor’s sword flashing out to defy his axe. All he wanted was the opening, the opportunity, to drive that axe into his foe’s body.

Back and forth the two champions fought. The fires were on both sides of the bridge now. Only the dead shared the span with them; all others had retreated before the advancing flames. At either bank, the onlookers continued to plead with their heroes to disengage, to save themselves.

The fires on the dwarf side of the span caused Morgrim to pull his forces and what remained of Brok’s back. Liandra saw them hurrying through the burning streets, retreating before they could be engulfed by the flames they themselves had kindled.

The elves lingered a little longer, but their calls to Salendor went unheeded. The elf lord’s sword licked out, hewing one of the wings from Brok’s helm. The dwarf’s axe raked across the asur’s arm, ripping free his cloak. It fluttered there a moment before flying off into the fiery breeze. Elf and dwarf took a step back, glaring into one another’s face, then they threw themselves back into the fray.

It was the last Liandra saw of them. In the next instant the bridge, its wooden supports weakened by the fires burning beneath it, shuddered and groaned. With a terrible howl, the span lifted up and then went crashing down into the blazing inferno raging below.

Such was the doom of Lord Salendor and Brok Stonefist. The vision that had haunted the elf lord for so many years.

Liandra turned from the fiery holocaust. Sternly she ordered the grieving warriors of Salendor’s household guard to make their escape from the dying city.

More than ever, the elves of Elthin Arvan would need every warrior they could find. The question was, without Salendor, who would lead them?

CHAPTER SIX

Changes in the Tide
322nd year of the reign of Caledor II

It was a strange thing for Thoriol to look out over the familiar vistas of Tor Vael after such a long time. There had been many opportunities to visit his mother, of course, but somehow something had always arisen to interfere with such a meeting. Always some court function, some visiting dignitary who had to be attended, some royal hunt that wouldn’t wait. It was as though the king had become jealous of him and didn’t want to share him with anybody.

Thoriol would have called such an idea absurd once, just as he had called Caradryel’s talk about him being groomed as the king’s heir absurd. Now, after nearly a century in the court of the Phoenix King, he knew better than to discount any possibility. His uncle was, by turns, fawningly indulgent and obsessively possessive of Thoriol. King Caledor was proud to display his nephew at the court, to dress him in the finest raiment, to attach him to the most beautiful courtiers and courtesans. He had arranged the finest instructors to be found in the ten kingdoms to teach Thoriol the most intricate nuances of courtly custom, dance and diplomacy. When it seemed to the king that life in Lothern was becoming dull for his nephew, they would quickly leave on an expedition to hunt lions in Chrace or griffons in Cothique. The king was prepared to indulge any whim Thoriol expressed, so long as it kept his nephew close to him.

At last, however, even King Caledor had to concede to Thoriol’s desire to again walk the halls where he had played as a child. On past occasions he had always invoked a longing to see his mother again – a tack that typically resulted in the king summoning Yethanial away from Tor Vael to attend the royal presence. This time, Thoriol had invoked the memory of his father. It was something that never failed to make the king bow to his wishes, but it was a tactic that never failed to make him feel ashamed.

Thoriol turned when he heard footsteps on the balcony behind him. He expected to find his mother coming out to check on him. Instead he found that the light tread belonged to Caradryel. The diplomat’s expression was as inscrutable as ever.

‘What is it that you see out there?’ Caradryel asked as he joined the prince.

Thoriol smiled at the question. He’d come to understand Caradryel better during his time among the king’s court. He’d even come to appreciate the intricacies of how the diplomat operated – questions such as the one he’d just asked, innocuous things in themselves that could nevertheless reveal the thoughts and intentions of those who answered.

‘It isn’t what I see,’ Thoriol said. ‘It’s what I don’t see.’ He leaned against the rail, staring out across the purple horizon. ‘How many times I stood here as a child watching for Draukhain to come flying out from behind the clouds carrying my father back home.’

‘Lady Liandra writes that Draukhain still makes his lair in the bay of Tor Alessi. A spit of rock they now call “the Dragon’s Lament”. She says it is piled high with the bodies of the dwarfs he kills when he flies away to hunt.’ Caradryel fixed Thoriol with a sympathetic gaze. ‘He’s refused any rider since your father, even refused the company of his fellow dragons. It takes a great soul to cause a dragon to mourn him.’

Thoriol turned his back on the view, staring back at the tower and the hall where his mother was waiting for him. ‘What else does she write?’ Even now, he was loath to speak her name, loath to acknowledge the indiscretion his father had shared with Liandra. It would tarnish his memories, and memories were all he had left of his father.

‘That is why Lady Yethanial was so eager to see you,’ Caradryel said. ‘That’s why she was so insistent. She wanted to speak to you directly, not convey her meaning through me.’

Thoriol clapped the diplomat on the shoulder, a comradely gesture he would never have spared Caradryel back in Kor Evril. ‘Here I thought you were simply weary of playing the messenger.’

Caradryel shrugged. ‘It’s rewarding work, after a fashion. Where else would I develop such a knack for eluding Hulviar’s spies?’

The prince followed Caradryel back into the tower. As he’d expected, Lady Yethanial was seated near the fire, a fur wrap hanging about her shoulders. For some time she had been given to chills, steadfastly refusing the ministrations of either mage or physician. It was always like his mother to think she could find her own answers buried away in some ancient tome of lore.

The other occupant of the room was more surprising. Thoriol had seen Lord Athinol only a few times at Caledor’s court. Usually he was away in the east, leading the troops in driving the last scraps of Malekith’s followers to their well-deserved ruin. He tried to keep prejudice from his dealings with Athinol, though he found it hard since he knew the silver-haired lord was Liandra’s father. To drag him away from the battlefield, his daughter’s tidings must be dire indeed.

Yethanial rose as her son entered the hall. With a step that struggled to marry haste and dignity, she walked over and embraced Thoriol. ‘It is good to see you home again,’ she said.

‘Would that the circumstances were more amenable,’ Thoriol said. ‘But the king would hardly let me stray far from him if they were.’

Lord Athinol rose to his feet, a trace of alarm in his face. ‘The king suspects you?’

‘Far from it,’ Caradryel assured him. ‘If Caledor had any misgivings about his nephew he would send him as far from him as he could.’

Thoriol withdrew from his mother’s arms, looking to her and then to Athinol. ‘I wonder at that,’ he said. ‘It is certain Hulviar has his suspicions and he certainly has the king’s ear. Whatever influence I might have on my uncle, Hulviar’s is greater.’

Athinol removed a fold of parchment from the cuff of his tunic, tapping it against his forearm. ‘Was it Hulviar then who suggested dismissing Prince Naeir from command of the armies in Elthin Arvan? Liandra tells me that Lord Draikyll has arrived in Tor Alessi to replace him.’

‘It could well be,’ Thoriol said after a moment’s thought. ‘I know the king was unhappy with Naeir and considering replacing him. I didn’t know he’d chosen Draikyll.’

Caradryel shook his head and started to pace before the fire. ‘That’s bad,’ he said. ‘It means Hulviar has planted enough doubt in the king’s mind that he’s starting to keep secrets from you. He was open enough about the other generals he appointed – at least with you.’

‘Is Draikyll’s appointment so very different?’ Thoriol wondered.

‘It is to those of us who still think we can extricate ourselves from this useless war,’ Yethanial told him. ‘Draikyll is a noble of considerable influence and resources. He is also aware that both his fortune and his influence are waning. The wealth of Elthin Arvan would appeal to him, as would the prestige of being the general who drove the dawi back into their holes.’

Colour rushed into Athinol’s face. ‘There are enough people who still owe him favours that Draikyll can draw considerable troops and material away from Ulthuan to support any adventure he plans in Elthin Arvan.’ He smacked his fist on the side of an ebony writing stand. ‘Just when our campaigns against the druchii have a real hope of victory, this has to happen!’

Thoriol looked from Yethanial to Athinol and then to Caradryel. ‘I thought you were against war.’

‘We war against the dwarfs by choice,’ Athinol said. ‘The war with the druchii is a matter of survival.’

Thoriol shook his head. ‘I don’t agree. Perhaps I’m the wrong one to be acting as your spy. I believe the king is right. We can’t allow ourselves to be driven from the colonies.’

‘The real war is with the druchii,’ Athinol declared.

The prince matched Athinol’s hostile glare. ‘The war is with the creatures that murdered my father.’

‘Then you’ve sided with the king?’ Yethanial asked. ‘You’ve taken his side?’

‘I don’t know,’ Thoriol confessed. ‘But I have to wonder. If we abandon the lands my father died to defend, then what did he give his life for?’

Ranuld Silverthumb could feel the weight of ages pressing down upon him. The venerable runelord felt as though every minute and every hour was like some parasitic thing, fattening itself upon what vitality remained in him, what magic still coursed through his veins. The old magic, the magic that had carved the first holds from the roots of the mountain. The magic that had brought the great runes to the dawi. The magic that had forged the mighty Anvils of Doom.

The magic that had drawn the gronti-duraz from the dark beneath the world.

Generations had passed since the gronti-duraz last stirred. The great stone giants were the greatest accomplishment of the ancients, the pinnacle of the runesmith’s art. Their awakening was a secret known to only a few now. Like so much of the old ways and the old magic, there were none among the lesser generations wise enough to be entrusted with such knowledge.

The runelord sank back in his stone chair, feeling the comforting chill of the naked granite through his robes. So few among the dawi really understood. They waged their wars and pursued their grudges, chased after gold and glory, all the time oblivious to the changes all around them. They were blind to the poison sifting through the very air, seeping down into the very rock, sinking into their own bones. The light was fading, but none noticed because there was still enough to let them see.

The younger runesmiths and even some of the elders of the Burudin chose to ignore it. They allowed themselves to be drawn into comparatively petty feuds and vengeance. They let the runes be twisted and warped, put to uses that only a generation before would have been unthinkable. They turned a blind eye to the excesses of the engineers’ guild and their reckless experimentation. The destruction of Kazad Mingol should have been enough to stir them from their indifference.

Ranuld sighed. Even the kings were deaf. Claiming to venerate their runelords, they instead denied them their true purpose. They’d defied his every attempt to gather the Burudin, to work the great magic that alone could lead the dawi back to the old ways and warn them away from the doom before them.

The runelord cast his gaze across the darkened hall. He let his eyes linger on the silver war shield. Once it had allowed him to commune with his fellow runelords. Perhaps it might still, if he were to focus his dwindling powers upon it and draw out the enchantments trapped within its runes. But would anyone respond? And if they did, would there be any purpose to it?

He no longer believed there was any use trying to defy the will of the kings. One look at the shadowy hall convinced him of that. The pedestals where the Anvils of Doom rested were half empty. Three of the six had been carried off to war. Not for a single battle, but dragged along through the entire campaign, hauled about like a bolt thrower or rock lobber, like a mere weapon to be used and forgotten.

Ranuld lifted his gaze, looking past the remaining Anvils and to the great hunched shapes that crouched in the darkness. The gronti-duraz, the mighty golems fashioned at the dawn of dwarf kind. The first was said to have been shaped by Thungi himself, ancestor god of the runesmiths. First or last, they were marvels of magic – manifestations of what the dawi had once been capable of.

The runelord looked at the three Anvils, wondering if he dared do what he had in mind with only three of them to magnify his power. Briefly he considered summoning his apprentice Morek. The young runesmith had proven himself a most capable student. Ranuld coughed as a chuckle caught in his throat. What he had in mind was dangerous enough alone. To have some young wazzock mucking things up would only make things that much worse.

Besides, he had grown somewhat fond of Morek. He didn’t really want to watch him die.

Ranuld squirmed back in his chair, trying to make himself as comfortable as possible. He raised his runestaff, pointing it towards the Anvils. One last time he wondered if he should try what he wanted to do. Wondered if he shouldn’t just allow himself and the old magic to fade away.

No, that was never the dawi way. A dwarf was too stubborn to quit, no matter the odds against him. It was the great strength of their kind and also their great weakness.

Letting the runes take shape in his mind, Ranuld let the magic flow through him, flow down the length of his runestaff and into the Anvils. One by one, the artefacts began to glow with power, fingers of golden lightning crackling and dancing across them. Ranuld could feel his blood boiling inside his veins as he continued to feed energy into the Anvils. More and still more, as much as he could summon. As much as he could command.

Blood dripped from his nose, from his ears and mouth, sizzling as it splashed against the cold granite of his chair. Still Ranuld kept channelling the power through him and into the Anvils. More, just a little more! He could smell his beard begin to cook, could feel his skin crackling and sloughing away.

Through the pain of his exertions, Ranuld glanced at those great stone giants crouching in the darkness, those manifestations of the old magic and the old ways. He focused his thoughts upon the great rune, the secret too enormous to ever be written down. The rune that would bring life to unmoving stone. The rune that would make the gronti-duraz walk.

The agony was incredible now. Ranuld heard his teeth burst, one after another, felt their fragments trickling down his beard. They sounded like pebbles as they struck the floor.

His gaze strayed from the golems, intending to see what had become of his teeth. Instead his eyes fixated upon the hand gripping his runestaff. The skin had completely burned away, but what lay exposed beneath was neither flesh nor bone, but blackened stone.

Ranuld slumped back in his chair, breaking the connection between himself and the Anvils. It needed more strength than he possessed to rouse the gronti-duraz, more power than a single runelord could summon.

He watched as the power he’d drawn into them slowly faded from the Anvils. When it was gone, Ranuld tried to stir from his chair. The effort was too great. His legs felt as though they were lead. He looked down at his hand, watching as the petrifaction he’d observed continued to spread.

There were a few secrets he would have liked to pass on to Morek in what time was left to him. Not the great rune that would waken the gronti-duraz, but useful things. It seemed his apprentice would have to learn them for himself, if he ever could.

Ranuld Silverthumb, High Runelord of Karaz-a-Karak, swung his head around, fixing his eyes on the slumbering stone giants. He wanted them to be the last thing he saw before his body was completely petrified and he joined them in their stony slumbers.

Heglan Copperfist looked up from his labours, staring at the stuffed birds that filled his hidden workshop. Few dwarfs had ever been here. His brother Nadri, a handful of others. He knew Guildmaster Strombak suspected the existence of such a workshop, but the master engineer had never pressed Heglan for the details. It afforded Strombak the ability to deny any involvement in Heglan’s continuing experiments.

The whole of the engineers’ guild seemed divided over the matter of the skryzan-harbark even now. There was one faction that urged Heglan to build more of the airships, perhaps smaller ones that wouldn’t cause as much destruction if they crashed. The other faction roared for him to be given the short trouser ritual and cast out of the guild. Heglan suspected that King Brynnoth’s continued confidence in the airships was what made Strombak so noncommittal. After the conflagration that engulfed Kazad Mingol, he was certain there was nothing more the Guildmaster wanted than to cleanse his hands of the whole affair.

Heglan appreciated that sentiment more than Strombak could ever guess. After the calamitous finish to the battle, he’d ordered the skryzan-harbark back to Barak Varr. Carefully and deliberately he’d had each one disassembled. Piece by piece they had been brought down into his workshops to be examined, studied and catalogued. In the shock of the conflagration, there had been none to gainsay his decision. It was only later that more calculating voices had risen to point out that while the destruction had been unfortunate, Kazad Mingol would have been destroyed by the dragons in any event. More to the point, the airships had killed one dragon and left a second mortally wounded at a cost that was, after all, quite small compared to the losses inflicted on the dawi armies during the Fourth Siege of Tor Alessi.

Maybe so, but the dwarfs who had been lost had been his dwarfs, the crews that he himself had chosen. That made Heglan feel directly responsible for what had happened to them. Caught in such a ghastly explosion, none of them had any chance at all.

It shouldn’t have happened. Heglan had tried and tried to replicate the effects with the materials from the surviving airships. Canvas, wood, gas – nothing would recreate even a fraction of what he’d witnessed above Kazad Mingol.

There was something missing. Some factor he had been unable to work into his calculations. Until he found it, until he discovered what it was and found a way to negate it, he couldn’t allow the skryzan-harbark to return to the sky. The danger was simply too great.

Heglan rose from his work table and marched over to the great stone shelves that held the materials he’d been experimenting on. Not for the first time his attention was drawn to the jar of Tharzharr he’d removed from Nadri’s Retribution’s arsenal.

It was strange stuff to be certain, the discovery of Thane Drogor of Kazak Zorn. The incendiary burned more violently than anything Heglan had ever encountered, short of molten lava. But it didn’t merely burn what it touched; it devoured it, gnawing away with its fiery teeth until there was nothing left.

Heglan frowned as he looked at the jar. The impressions of tiny paws were distinct in the dust coating it. Glancing down he saw a rat lying on the floor just behind the shelf, as stiff and lifeless as a board. The sight of the tiny carcass made him reflect on the ingredients that went into Drogor’s incendiary.

‘Foulstone,’ Heglan muttered to himself. It was an ugly green-black rock found in the deeper mines. Normally dwarfs despised the stuff. It had a corrosive effect on any ores near it. Discovering a vein of foulstone meant that any gold or silver in the area would be degraded, perhaps even completely worthless. The stuff was also toxic. Breathing in foulstone dust produced a condition called weeping lung where the insides of the lung were burned and began to fill with pus. It meant a slow and loathsome death for any dwarf.

When foulstone had been rendered down into granules to make Tharzharr, those who handled it had been careful to keep their faces covered. Even then, several had developed wracking coughs and dripping noses.

Another curious property of the stuff was the unnatural way in which it attracted rats. Any shaft with a profusion of rats scurrying around it almost invariably held a vein of foulstone.

Still, for all its nasty properties, every test Heglan had made with the stuff failed to produce the same catastrophic reaction he had witnessed.

‘Maybe Drogor could have explained,’ the engineer said as he carried the jar back to his workbench. That, of course, was impossible. Drogor had been aboard the great King Snorri when it caught fire and exploded. There had been no survivors, not even enough to bring back to Barak Varr and inter in the vaults.

‘What makes you think their bones would rest any easier in your musty old vaults?’

Heglan leapt up in surprise as the voice echoed through his workshop. He was alone. He knew he was alone. No one could come in here unobserved. The secret door in his public workshop was something only he knew how to operate. Even if someone had discovered the mechanism, however lost in his experiments he was, he would have noticed the wall rotating to admit an intruder.

‘I came by my own method.’

The engineer spun back around, staring at the displays of his birds. A shadow moved out from among them. As it stepped into the light, Heglan blinked in disbelief. It was impossible! He had to be suffering from some kind of delusion, some fantasy brought on by overwork.

‘No. I’m quite real,’ Drogor said. An amused smile formed on his face. ‘Though perhaps “real” is a bit too limited a concept. Ideas like that can be rather limiting.’

Heglan slumped against the workbench, spilling the jar of Tharzharr across the surface. ‘You… you’re…’

Drogor slowly walked towards the horrified engineer. ‘Dead? There we go again with such finite, constrained ideas. You’d be much better off without them.’

‘Keep back,’ Heglan warned. He drew a heavy iron spanner from his belt, brandishing it as though it were a battleaxe.

The other dwarf paused, his smile growing even wider. ‘Do you really think that can stop me if I survived the explosion of my airship?’ Drogor laughed. ‘Do try to be reasonable. Believe it or not, I came here to help you.’

Heglan rushed the intruder, bringing the spanner crashing against his skull. He could feel the bone splinter beneath the iron, could see the blood and brains rushing from Drogor’s scalp.

Drogor’s fist slammed into Heglan’s chest, throwing the engineer across the room. He slammed into the shelves holding the materials from the airships. He felt one of the shelves crack as he slammed against it. He also felt his spine snap.

‘That was rude,’ Drogor warned the paralysed engineer. ‘I almost think you aren’t happy to see me.’ He paced across the workshop, finally settling at the workbench where Heglan had been making his studies.

‘Your skryzan-harbark are quite clever,’ Drogor declared. ‘You know, they really could have won the war for your people. The elves could never have roused enough dragons to overcome them. After all, it takes only a year for one of your workshops to turn out a new airship. Do you have any idea how long it takes to rear a dragon from its egg?’

Heglan tried to speak, but all that came from his mouth was a bubble of blood. Drogor frowned at his distress, shaking his head sadly.

‘Your kind could still be masters of the air, despite themselves,’ Drogor said. ‘They could force the elves from your lands and bring a new age of peace.’ The smile now stretched across the entirety of his face, more like something ophidian than dwarfish. ‘But who wants to see an end to war? Peace is so boring. Yet that’s what they want, those who think they’ll make more airships without you.’

Drogor leaned across the workbench, his grin becoming still more predatory as he gazed on Heglan. The engineer was doing his best to reach a jar of blasting powder on one of the nearby shelves. The sight brought another laugh from Drogor.

‘No need for that, I assure you,’ Drogor said. ‘No need at all. You see, I came here to show you what happened to your ships. It was the least I could do after all the amusement you’ve afforded me. I shall truly miss your kind when they’re all gone.’ Drogor ran his finger through the spilled Tharzharr. ‘This is the key, you know. This and the gas you used to lift your ships. But they needed something else. A catalyst. And that, I fear, was something you simply couldn’t find on your own.’

Heglan gaped in shock as a grisly blue fire suddenly rose from the centre of Drogor’s hand, gyrating and wriggling above his palm as though it were something alive.

‘You see, I’m that catalyst,’ Drogor stated. He started to move his burning hand towards the spilled explosive, then hesitated. ‘We don’t have any of your lift gas around, but don’t worry, the explosion will still be enough to demolish this workshop and remind your kinsman that they simply aren’t meant to fly.’

Drogor’s eyes seemed to roll over, changing into the opaque lenses of some vulturine creature. ‘Don’t trouble yourself about my welfare,’ he told Heglan, his smile stretching until it burst his skin. ‘You see, I’ve been through this before.’

Heglan’s world vanished in a flash of thunder and light as Drogor slammed his burning claw into the explosive powder.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Sea Hold
335th year of the reign of Caledor II

The small flotilla of galleys cast anchor at the mouth of the bay. Far to the south, barely a hint on the horizon, the roofs of Sith Rionnasc reflected the noonday sun. Away to the north there was only the vastness of the Snow Sea, a great expanse that could swallow the six asur vessels without a trace.

Liandra couldn’t quite conceal her distaste for the ritual she was witnessing any more than she could hide her loathing of the highborn who was sponsoring it. Lord Ilendril was one of that breed who had been expelled from Ulthuan by the first King Caledor, cast out for their callous, unabashed ambition. She had known some of the disgraced grey lords yet remained in the colonies of Elthin Arvan, but she’d imagined them to be remorseful, not still trying to advance the immoral philosophies that had sent them into exile.

From the aftcastle of The Sword of Eataine, she had a good view of what was transpiring. Ilendril’s pet mage, a gaunt and pallid creature named Vithrein, sat at the middle of a cabalistic triangle. Two other mages, ones Liandra recognised as former vassals of Lord Caerwal, who had once been imprisoned by Prince Imladrik, stood at opposing sides of the triangle. With her own arcane senses, she could almost see the energies they were feeding into Vithrein, magnifying the aethyric harmonies flowing around the conjurer.

‘This won’t work,’ Liandra said, more to herself than those around her. The words drew their notice just the same. Lord Draikyll had assembled the greatest and most powerful nobles in Elthin Arvan to witness this ritual. The general was depending on this exhibition to bring them into line, to make them enthusiastic supporters of the campaign he’d mapped out. Liandra’s doubt made him anxious. She was, after all, a mage and more versed in the possibilities of magic than he was. The general glanced aside at Ilendril, just a hint of accusation in his eyes.

Lord Ilendril took note of the displeasure of his patron. Calmly, he moved down the crowd of noble spectators until he was right beside Liandra. ‘Is it that you think it won’t work, or that you merely hope it won’t work?’ He shook his head. ‘Clinging to the old ways is no way to build an empire.’ Ilendril laughed and looked back at Draikyll. ‘Or win a war.’

‘It is wrong,’ Liandra said.

Ilendril laughed. ‘No more wrong than putting a horse in harness or training a hawk for the hunt,’ he said. ‘Asuryan blessed the asur with minds and souls, the knowledge and ability to bring order from the confusion of nature. We are meant to control the world around us. It is our birthright. The only difference between what we are doing now and what a horse-breaker is doing in Tiranoc is a matter of perception. The prejudices that exist within our own minds.’ He smiled at her, laying his hand on her arm in a token of sympathy. ‘There is no immorality in power,’ he said.

Liandra pulled away from his touch. ‘The druchii would agree with you,’ she hissed.

Ilendril stepped away, fighting to subdue the outrage her insult had roused. For a moment, he stared at her, his gaze growing colder with each heartbeat. Only when Draikyll called to him did he turn away.

‘Begin your demonstration, Lord Ilendril,’ the general commanded.

‘At once,’ Ilendril said, bowing. He nodded to Vithrein on the deck below. The gaunt mage didn’t respond, but the low incantation he’d been murmuring suddenly grew louder and more vibrant. Caerwal’s mages likewise increased the tempo of their own chanting. The rigging hanging from the masts above snapped in a silent wind as unseen forces spiralled down towards the deck.

Liandra could see the aethyric emanations being drawn down into the three mages. She watched as the two standing outside the triangle fed their power into Vithrein. He in turn transferred the energies into the object that rested along the third face of the triangle. It was a long, curved piece of bone, yellowed with age. A tooth, drawn up from the depths by the net of a Sith Rionnasc fisherman. The focus now of this ritual Ilendril had conceived.

For many minutes, the three mages fed energy into the tooth. Then, with a keening wail, Vithrein ended his conjuration. The other two mages staggered back, slumping against the masts as they tried to regain their balance. Vithrein seemed no less drained than his helpers, but he managed to beckon his master down from the aftcastle before sagging to his knees in an exhausted heap.

Ilendril seemed discomfited by the condition of his conjurers, but he had regained his composure by the time he descended to the deck and lifted the tooth from the silver stand that supported it. Turning back to the assembled nobles, he held the tooth out to them. His gaze lingered on Draikyll and he bowed again to the general.

‘What you witness now is no trick,’ he declared. ‘Those of you who know me also know I have no facility with the arcane arts.’ Ilendril nodded to Liandra. ‘My lady will relate the difficulty of what you will witness. It is hard enough to stir a dragon with which an asur is already familiar and in sympathetic harmony. How much greater the difficulties to evoke a creature from the depths with which there is no such harmony?’

Ilendril smiled and raised the tooth to his lips. ‘You shall see,’ he declared. Moving so that he faced the sea, the elf lord began to blow into the hollowed tooth, sounding it as though it were a flute or horn.

Or whistle.

The Sword of Eataine was one of six galleys in the fleet Lord Draikyll had brought from Tor Alessi to the waters off Sith Rionnasc. Magnificent vessels, lean and sharp, lethal as arrows and nearly as swift, they were the masterworks of Eataine’s shipyards. When Draikyll had brought this fleet with him to Elthin Arvan, the colonists had been awed by the tremendous power that would now protect them. Now they would be awed by a far more tremendous power.

Many minutes passed while Ilendril blew a low, dolorous note upon the hollow tooth. The spectators on the aftcastle shifted uncomfortably, some of them whispering to each other about the sorry spectacle of seeing Ilendril publicly humiliated. Liandra felt hope stir inside that it would be a failure.

Then the whispers fell silent and dread returned to Liandra’s heart. There was turmoil on the formerly quiet sea. Something immense was rising from beneath, propelling itself just below the surface. Lookouts on the other galleys shouted in alarm; one of the ships listed dangerously to port as the thing from below passed just under its hull. Overhead, the noisy croaks of seabirds became a bedlam of squawks and shrieks.

On The Sword of Eataine, all had fallen quiet. Only the voice of a sailor praying to Mathlann intruded upon the silence. The very air had grown pregnant with suspense. The nobles of Elthin Arvan hardly dared to breathe as they stared out across the waves.

Whatever had been swimming towards the galley appeared to have subsided, for there was no trace of its movements now. Yet Ilendril still sounded that fearful note from the hollowed tooth. It was an audible reminder to his audience that this peaceful moment was but the quiet before the storm.

The storm broke in an explosion of foam and spray. The Sword of Eataine rolled violently as a gigantic body burst up from the depths right beside the ship. An oily, dank reptilian reek washed across the decks, stifling in its intensity. Liandra and the other nobles were forced to crane their necks back to gaze upon the ophidian head that topped the scaly tower now rising beside the ship.

A merwyrm, one of such size and vastness it might have been the spawn of the famed Amanar. The mighty serpent was hoary with age, encrustations of coral clinging to its spines and caking its horns. The sea birds dived down upon its back, squawking happily as they plucked crustaceans and parasites from its scales.

Ilendril lowered the tooth. Boldly, he walked to the rail of the galley, drawing so near the enormous serpent that he could have stretched out his hand and touched its scaly neck. The elf lord leaned back, fastening his gaze upon the merwyrm’s reptilian eyes.

‘Dance for me,’ Ilendril commanded. For an instant, the serpentine head tilted downwards, a bifurcated tongue licking out from between the jaws. It seemed the merwyrm would devour this impertinent little insect who had the temerity to shout at it.

Then, incredibly, the gigantic body began to sway from side to side, writhing with an unnatural, sinuous grace. Ilendril laughed and flung up the hand holding the hollowed-out tooth. He revelled in the awestruck expressions of his fellow nobles, but most of all, he seemed to savour the look of horror that gripped Liandra.

A merwyrm, conjured up not by some harmony between summoner and summoned, but by use of an enslaving enchantment. Liandra wondered if the others could be so blind that they failed to understand the implications of what Ilendril had done.

Were they all so fixated upon the war with the dwarfs that they couldn’t see beyond that?

Nugdrinn Hammerfoot stamped across the deck of Grungni’s Fire. Around the steamship, a flotilla of dwarf vessels ploughed through the waves, churning the dark waters of the Black Gulf with their great paddle wheels. No simple merchant ships these, but ironclad warships festooned with catapults and ballistae, cadres of warriors waiting below decks to board the enemy. It was the most fearsome command Nugdri had been entrusted with since his captaincy of Nadri’s Retribution.

War had come to Barak Varr. The Black Gulf just beyond the gates of the sea hold had long been considered a dawi lake, but now that once inviolate expanse was being contested. Up the Black Gulf had come a fleet of elgi ships such as Nugdri hadn’t believed could exist. They seemed as limitless as the silver of Karak Azul. When the spotters stationed in the towers far down the neck of the gulf had made their reports, no one had believed them. It was incredible, impossible, that the elgi could muster such strength.

Now that he saw the proof of those reports before his own eyes, Nugdri felt something he hadn’t felt since the great conflagration over Kazad Mingol. He felt fear.

The elf sailors seemed to be without any fear at all. Boldly they sailed past the forts along the shore, braving the rocks and bolts set upon them by each citadel’s artillery. Without hesitation they danced across the great chains that stretched just beneath the surface of the channel, their barbed links designed to rip the belly out of any ship that sailed above them when they were raised. Every defence the dwarfs threw at the vanguard of the fleet seemed useless. Sometimes an elf ship would suddenly flounder, appearing to fade away as it sank into the darkling waters. More often, however, they sailed onwards without any sign of damage.

Behind the scouting ships, a second tide of elven galleys ravaged the citadels, setting them alight with fiery arrows, pots of alchemical incendiaries and bolts of arcane flame. The sunken chains were severed by elgi magic as the bulk of the fleet pressed onwards, their captains taking far fewer chances with their hulls than those in the vanguard.

‘Full speed,’ Nugdri growled into the speaking horn set in a brass-faced cabinet on the captain’s deck. By some trick of engineering his voice would be propelled down into the engine room below. The stokers would feed still more coal into the hungry belly of his ship and set the great paddle wheel accelerating.

For all the good it would do. Nugdri hated to admit it, but as slight and fragile as the elgi galleys looked compared to the robust dawi ironclads, the enemy had the advantage in speed and agility. One good shot from a catapult would cripple a galley; a solid cast from the grudge throwers on the bigger warships would snap an elgi vessel in two. The problem was closing with the enemy, getting near enough to bring him to battle. The dwarf ships could withstand tremendous violence before taking any real damage. The elves had adopted a different tactic: instead of shrugging off an attack, they preferred to avoid it entirely.

Like jackals nipping at a wounded bull, the elgi made the most of their speed and agility. Always keeping out of reach, the galleys would sail near enough that their archers could loose a volley at the dwarfs. The arrows never struck true, always landing in the sea beside their target, but somehow that was even more infuriating than having them hit. It was unabashed mockery, a scornful insult to the dawi and their martial pride. It was a display of arrogance and disdain that had many a dwarf pulling his beard and muttering curses that would set his ancestors covering their ears.

Goaded beyond endurance, Nugdri’s flotilla pursued the elusive galleys. The fragile look of their enemy and their own faith in the strength of their ironclads, made the vindictive dwarf captains cast aside caution. One after another they broke formation to pursue the elves, trying to force them landwards and box them in against the coast.

Nugdri tried to signal his captains back into line, but they were too intent on venting their injured pride against the vexing elves to listen. Soon, he found that he only had five ships following his own. The rest were scattered across the Black Gulf.

Some of the slight galleys continued to plague and torment them, but Nugdri refused to rise to their bait. They were trying to draw him off. He had to discover why. The second wave of elgi warships was still too distant for the ironclads to close with them. Why then were these scouts so intent on holding him back?

The answer came in a display at once both incredible and fantastic. If he’d blinked, Nugdri would have missed the sudden manifestation. As his ironclad thundered onwards, a tall elgi galleon abruptly appeared on his portside, only a few rods away. He could make out the sea-serpent heraldry of the crew, the elaborate detail of its mermaid figurehead, the snap of its triangular sails as they rippled above the decks. Asur archers were already standing on that deck, their captain’s arm raised as he prepared to give the command to loose.

Nugdri roared into the speaking horn, ordering the paddle wheel set into reverse, trying to save his ship from the coming assault. Even as he gave the command, another elgi ship manifested from the nothingness. Elven sorcery, a cloak of magic, had concealed the elgi ships, hiding them from sight until the dwarfs were right upon them.

A terrible suspicion struck him as Nugdri glanced over his shoulder. He could still see the scattered ships of his flotilla, but there was no trace of their prey. The captains had been chasing illusions crewed by phantoms, nothing more than mirages conjured by elgi mages. No wonder the galleys had been so bold about exposing the dawi defences! The few that had seemed to be destroyed were nothing more than a further trick to keep the dwarfs from guessing the deception.

Nugdri’s crew scrambled to repel boarders while his artillerists and crossbows made ready to return the elgi attack. Their captain stomped his hammerfoot into the socket beside the ship’s wheel. Nothing but death would tear him from his post now. If need be, he would go down with his command.

Dawi warriors clashed with elgi swordsmen as the asur swarmed across the railing. The dwarfs had the advantage of brawn and determination, but the elves fought with a grisly grace, seeming to ignore the pitching deck beneath their feet. Where a dwarf axeman missed his strike because of the rolling deck, an elf blade flashed clean and true.

The swordsmen kept to the centre of the ship, for reasons that swiftly became obvious. Elf archers poised in the rigging of their own ships took careful aim and loosed a vicious volley down upon the dwarfs as they moved to surround the invaders. The attack wasn’t particularly lethal, mainly resulting in scratched armour and shallow wounds. It was the response that proved deadly. Waiting for the volley, the swordsmen lunged at the dwarfs before they could recover from the abrupt attack. The thrusting blades opened throats and skewered hearts in a brief, murderous melee. In only a few heartbeats, a dozen dwarfs lay bleeding across the deck.

From the forecastles of the elgi ships, bolt throwers launched their spears into Grungni’s Fire, the enchanted missiles punching through the ironclad hull. Trying to steer his ship to avoid the volley from one, Nugdri found himself in the sights of the other. Shouts from below decks attested to the effectualness of the elgi aim. The steamship was taking on water, though the all-important engine room had yet to be menaced.

Jinking away from the second elf ship, Nugdri felt his heart turn to lead. A third elgi galleon materialised from the nothingness and a volley of flaming arrows slammed down into the deck, setting the planks and clapboards on fire.

Nugdri realised this would be his last battle. He only hoped the elf illusions had been exposed soon enough to benefit the stronghold and allow King Brynnoth to mount a real defence against real enemies.

Of the chances for his own flotilla, Nugdri had no illusions.

From the great rock Durazon, King Brynnoth could look out over the lands surrounding the sea hold. What he saw with his one eye was enough to break a dozen hearts. The Black Gulf had gone from a dawi to an elgi lake. Most of the surrounding citadels had been captured or razed by the invaders; the few that still remained in dawi hands were cut off, the passages connecting them to Barak Varr collapsed by elgi magic. The garrisons were holding out thus far, but the king wondered how long the elves would allow that situation to continue. The defenders of the citadels could resist the elgi themselves and even their magic, but the enemy had other resources to draw upon.

Brynnoth turned his eyes landwards, looking out over the scorched fields and blackened pastures where the dwarfs had grown their crops and herds. ‘Drakk did that, two of them working together. Just like Kazad Thar.’

Standing beside his king, High Thane Onkmarr clenched his fists in impotent rage. ‘Since we brought the bolt throwers up onto the Durazon, the filthy wyrms have kept their distance. They’re eager enough to fight for the thagging elgi, but they aren’t so keen about dying for them.’

‘The elgi have other jobs for their monsters,’ Brynnoth growled. ‘The wyrms have already driven off armies from Karak Eight Peaks and Karak Hirn. The elgi are spread thin on the shore – if either of those armies had been able to make it through the passes, they could have pushed the vermin back into the Black Gulf.’

‘King Varnuf and King Valarik should have coordinated their forces,’ Onkmarr grumbled. ‘Then at least one of them might have got through. If the elgi could be driven from one side of the gulf then it would open a line of supply. As it stands, even the settlements the elgi haven’t burned can’t do anything to help us.’

King Brynnoth shook his head. From the top of the Durazon, he’d been able to watch what had befallen those armies. The dragons waited until they were in the narrow mountain passes and then swept down upon them. Boxed into the canyons, with nowhere to escape the dragon fire, the slaughter had been terrible. Both armies had withdrawn when it became clear they couldn’t force their way past the dragons and still have enough strength to do the besieged hold any good.

‘If we can force the elgi out of the tunnels, we can be reinforced through the Ungdrin Ankor,’ King Brynnoth declared, casting his eyes downwards, as though peering through the rock to the deeps far below.

Onkmarr frowned. ‘The elgi know it too. That’s where they’ve been clever. They’re thin around the gulf, but they’ve deployed in strength down in the tunnels. So far no relief force has been able to endure the gauntlet of elgi arrows and sorcery waiting for them.’ The High Thane pulled at his beard, tugging a few strands away in his fury. ‘Worse, the scum are starting to threaten the lower deeps of Barak Varr itself. If we have to confront a simultaneous invasion outside the walls and from right beneath us…’

‘It will be a recipe for disaster,’ Brynnoth affirmed. The king scratched at the hollow of his missing eye, wondering if some of his detractors weren’t right. They claimed that his reckless embracing of unproved inventions had drawn the attention of the elves. If he’d never allowed Heglan Copperfist to build his deranged skryzan-harbark and send them to confront the elgi drakk, it was doubtful the asur would have shown such interest in the sea hold. They hadn’t after the destruction of Feillas and Oeragor. It was the skryzan-harbark that had brought them down about Barak Varr’s gates.

Briefly, Brynnoth imagined how different the situation would be if he had Heglan’s airships to send against the elgi. That, of course, was impossible. The dramatic death of the engineer and the obliteration of his workshop had proven the stance Guildmaster Strombak and many of the other engineers had taken. The technology was too dangerous and unpredictable to pursue, more of a threat to those who used it than the enemy they would destroy.

What a vision it had been though! Driving the elves back into the sea, casting them out of dwarf lands forever. Seeing their drakk brought low, their carcasses burning at the feet of the mountains. Brynnoth would have been the great hero of the Karaz Ankor, his name more revered than that of the High King himself.

Shattered dreams now. Nothing more. His vision had ended in tragedy, and worse, it had brought the full fury of the war upon Brynnoth’s head. The king reached up with a trembling hand and pulled the crown from his head. Through his glazed eye he stared at the golden circlet. Never in his four hundred years had the weight of his crown felt so heavy upon his head.

From the tunnels beneath one of the dwarf citadels lining the Black Gulf, Lord Caerwal’s forces rushed into the deeps beneath Barak Varr. Mopping up the handful of survivors left by the merwyrms in the citadel had been pitifully easy, but now the elves were finding themselves fighting for every twist and turn in the tunnels. Hundreds of asur lay dead in the passages behind them, the only consolation lying in the hundreds of dwarfs who’d fallen with them.

Yet another corridor and Liandra found herself beset by a fresh surge of dawi warriors. Her blade descended upon the first dwarf to close with her in a flash of crimson and a welter of gore. The bearded warrior collapsed, a warhammer rolling free from his now slackened grip. He clutched blindly for her, trying to drag her down, immobilise her so that his comrades might make short work of her. Grimly, she thrust the point of her sword into the dwarf’s throat and ended his struggles.

Even as she rose from the cooling corpse, more of the dawi were rushing down the tunnel, their fierce war-cries ringing across the passage like a giant’s bellow. Hammer and axe, pick and sword, the dwarfs threw themselves into the assault. If they faltered, they would withdraw a short distance behind a screen of crossbows protected by tall shields of bronze. With the crossbows to cover them, the dawi fighters would regroup and return to the attack with the wilful stubbornness that characterised their race.

It had become a test of endurance to force the dwarfs back. With each assault Liandra saw scores of the warriors around her brought down. Young seafarers from Eataine, hardened veterans from Chrace, a wispy swordsman who’d been born in Sith Rionnasc barely a century ago. It was all such a waste. Everything these elves might have been, all the things they might have done, all the lives they could have touched, all of it snuffed out hundreds of feet beneath the surface in the black depths of the world, their lifeblood seeping away to stain the floor of a dwarf burrow.

Liandra could suffer no more of this. Taxed and diminished as her magic had become, she couldn’t allow this pointless carnage to go on. She had the power to end it, though it would leave her drained and wasted for hours, perhaps even days.

The cry of an elf swordswoman as her arm was lopped off by a dawi axe removed Liandra’s last tinge of restraint. ‘Defend me a moment,’ she told a pair of mail-clad warriors. One look at the mage and they leapt to carry out her order with a ferocity that nearly surpassed that of the dwarfs themselves. Liandra saw one bearded warrior stagger back, his throat opened by a flashing sword. Another collapsed in a gory heap as blood bubbled up from beneath his rent armour.

Then there was no time for thought or consideration of the battle raging around her. Closing her eyes fast, Liandra pulled at the aethyric harmonies, the intangible energies writhing through the air around her. Here, deep within the earth, in the very roots of Barak Varr, the vibrations had a strangely rigid quality about them, as though a wide stream had been funnelled into a narrow channel. It made it easier to latch on to the magic she sought, but at the same time rendered those energies much more difficult to shape and bind to her will. Maybe, at the height of her powers, she would have found it easier. As it was, she felt like a fisherman with some great catch fighting and straining at the end of the line. The difference was, if the catch broke her line, the aethyric discharge would probably run amok and kill every living thing in the tunnels for a league or so.

Liandra heard her heart pounding, felt her blood flowing faster and faster through her veins. Everything inside her was trying to speed up, to find harmony with the racing aethyric current. She knew her heart would burst before it could match that tempo. No, she had to force the current itself to flow. She had to master the magic; she couldn’t let it master her.

It was when she was nearly at the limit of her endurance, ready to cast the fish back before it could break the line, that she felt the power swell inside her. The aethyric current, or at least the strand she had drawn upon, was hers. Fixing her gaze on the line of crossbowmen and the thick bronze shields they sheltered behind, she turned those hard-won energies into the force she had envisioned. The incantation that whispered across her lips gave the power purpose and form.

A flare of blinding light seared across the dwarf ranks, howling through them with volcanic fury. The next instant, scores of crossbowmen were screaming, leaping out from behind their shields as the bronze plates turned red-hot and began to drip molten metal across them. Dislodged from their protection, fully illuminated by the afterglow of the magical light, the dwarfs quickly fell victim to asur arrows.

Confusion gripped the other dwarfs. The dramatic display of magic, the sudden and brutal killing of their crossbowmen, these drained the ferocity of their attack. The dawi retreated back down the passage. It wasn’t a rout – the dwarfs maintained good order as they withdrew – but it was a retreat just the same. And this time there wasn’t a file of crossbows to keep the elves from pursuing their shaken enemy. There wasn’t a wall of shields for the dwarfs to shelter behind and regroup.

Liandra took no part in that last, bloody stage of the battle. Drained by her magic, she leaned against the cold stone wall and tried to compose herself. Her heart and blood were still racing at incredible speed, still trying to match the magical current she had tapped into. It took her utmost concentration to force her body to calm itself and to deny the aethyric harmony that sought to draw her in.

When she was composed, the first thing she saw was Lord Caerwal staring at her. His face bore an impatient, arrogant kind of displeasure, but he knew enough about the ways of magic to wait until Liandra was somewhat recovered before voicing that displeasure.

‘Do you think that was wise?’ Caerwal asked, clearly already aware of what he considered the right answer. Among the asur of Elthin Arvan there was no lord or lady more committed to the war than Caerwal. His every breath was devoted to avenging the destruction of Athel Numiel, the city he’d built and the dwarfs had razed. Anything that obstructed that grim purpose he took as a personal affront.

‘No,’ Liandra said. ‘But it was necessary. Something had to be done to break the dawi formation. Otherwise we might have been days fighting for this miserable stretch of burrow.’

Somehow Caerwal’s gaze managed to become even more hostile. ‘What use is capturing the tunnel?’ he snapped. ‘I don’t want the tunnel, I want the mud-digger’s reservoir! I was depending on your magic to find it, remember? The magic that brought us this far.’

Liandra pushed herself away from the wall, forcing herself to stand steady on her own two feet when she answered the outraged lord. The last thing she wanted was to appear weak before Caerwal, to let him think he owned her the way he felt he owned those who served him. She wasn’t one of his servants or stooges. She’d been ordered by Lord Draikyll to attend him – a temporary relationship that would end with the siege.

‘What good is knowing where the reservoir is if we can’t reach it?’ she retorted. She waved her hand at the carnage around them, at the bodies heaped on the floor. ‘This is the worst opposition we’ve encountered since the citadel on the shore was captured. What do you think they’re trying to protect so fiercely?’

Caerwal tapped a finger against the blade he held, a sword that Liandra noticed was as clean and polished as the day he’d disembarked on the beach. ‘You could be right,’ he conceded. He nodded, more to himself than to her. ‘Yes, by Hoeth, you may be right.’

Liandra turned from Caerwal, looking instead at the ten bodyguards the lord had brought with him into the tunnels. Like their master, their mail was unblemished by the stains of battle. ‘You might join your warriors and see for yourself,’ she suggested.

‘They have their job and I have mine,’ Caerwal said. He patted the golden coffer that was chained to his belt. ‘My purpose is more important than killing a few dwarfs.’ His face took on a feral, nearly animalistic expression of hate. ‘I intend to kill them all.’ The expression faded and when he looked back at Liandra there was a smile on his face. ‘We’ll bide here a time until you are recovered.’

There was no sun or moons to reckon the passage of time by down in the dwarfish deeps, but Caerwal managed with an hourglass fashioned from diamond and powdered manticore heart. There was some measure of enchantment in it – no matter which way it was turned, the sands would flow in the same direction until they had all passed from one sphere to the other. By Caerwal’s reckoning then, it was three hours before a messenger came back to them and reported that the way ahead was clear. The dwarfs had been vanquished.

The reservoir was a great chamber carved from the living rock of the mountain. Immense stone faces, the effigies of the dawi’s cheerless ancestor gods, scowled down at the elves as they entered the room. A wide shelf of stone ran along the edges of the room, an array of bronze, copper and iron pipes snaking across them to dive into the great basin that dominated the chamber. By torchlight, the water in the reservoir looked almost black, splashing against the sides of the basin in little eddies.

All around the room, dwarf bodies were strewn. They’d put up a fierce fight for this place, doing their best to keep the invaders from capturing the hall. Many had been pierced over and over by asur arrows. Slicks of blood along the floor told where wounded warriors had tried to drag themselves back into the fray.

‘It should be easy enough to destroy these pipes,’ Liandra said as she studied the vault. ‘The dawi must be using them to pump water from the reservoir into the hold.’

‘Destroy them?’ Caerwal’s laugh was the nastiest thing Liandra had heard drop from the tongue of another elf. Even the druchii witch Drutheira hadn’t made her skin crawl the way Caerwal’s laugh now did.

The elf lord reached to his belt. With a vicious tug he snapped the chain holding the golden coffer in place. An awful light gleamed in Caerwal’s eyes as he drew from within it a lead flask. ‘I want dead dwarfs, not thirsty ones,’ he said.

Liandra shook her head. ‘You’re going to poison the reservoir,’ she said, feeling her stomach clench at the thought.

‘This one and all the others I can find,’ Caerwal said. He held the flask higher, tapping his finger against it. ‘This is powdered basilisk venom. One drop is enough to eat through the bellies of a hundred dwarfs. I’ll send thousands to their filthy gods.’ Savagely, he upended the flask. A foul-smelling, luminous green sludge dripped out, slithering with syrupy coldness from the bottle to the reservoir. As it struck the water, a luminous sparkle crackled about the slime, wisps of malignant magic that crawled away into the depths. When it was all gone, Caerwal tossed the emptied flask into the basin, watching as it sank from view.

‘I have more of the poison for the other reservoirs,’ Caerwal said, misjudging the cause for Liandra’s disgusted look. ‘Without a city to maintain or colonists to support, I have nothing better to spend my fortune on.’

‘We call them savages,’ Liandra marvelled. She could see a few of the warriors gathered in the reservoir shared her revulsion, but many – too many – had a hateful satisfaction on their faces. That was the real horror of war. Not those killed in the fighting, but those who were made dead while they were still alive.

First Ilendril’s ghastly magic that enslaved the minds and spirits of other creatures, now Caerwal’s despicable poisons. Liandra turned from the reservoir, making her way back into the battle-scarred tunnel. She had to get away from the smell of blood, the stink of hate. She had to get back to the surface and the clean, open air.

Behind her, she could hear Lord Caerwal calling. ‘You’ll see, Liandra. I’ll poison every mud-eater in this place. I’ll turn Barak Varr into the greatest sepulchre in Elthin Arvan!’

High King Gotrek watched as his warriors mustered in the great hall of Karaz-a-Karak. With the mammoth statues of their ancestor gods looking down upon them, ten thousand dwarf warriors bent their knee to the king. There were warriors from Ekrund and Zhufbar, Kraka Drak in the far north and Karak Drazh in the far south. Norse dwarfs and even skarrenawi. All had come to swear allegiance to the High King’s banner, to march with him to war.

It was something Gotrek had long desired, a muster not of Karaz-a-Karak or Karak Eight Peaks. Not the drawing together of warriors to fight for a single hold. Not separate armies grudgingly accepting a unified command, yet still pursuing their own individual ambitions and hunt for glory.

The grisly example of Brok Stonefist was a lesson. Most dwarfs couldn’t see it that way, but Gotrek did. Brok’s stubborn pursuit for his own glory and his own prestige had brought him to ruin. How close a thing it could have been. What if Brok’s warriors had been needed elsewhere, needed to be where the army’s supposed general, Morgrim, needed them to be? The entire campaign could have become a disaster because of one dwarf’s selfish ambition.

The Lord of the Tunnels was revered as a hero now, cheered throughout the Karaz Ankor for his duel with Lord Salendor. He’d earned himself a place in history. Gotrek wasn’t so sure he deserved it.

Of course, pride and ambition weren’t qualities rare among the dwarfs and certainly not among their lords. The kings of Karak Hirn and Karak Eight Peaks, rather than wait for armies from the other holds to help them break the siege at Barak Varr had instead set out all on their own. The disastrous results had more to do with personal ambition than marauding dragons, though he despaired of ever making the kings see it that way.

Now a third army had been repulsed. King Hrallson’s warriors from Karak Azul had tried to reach Barak Varr through the Ungdrin Ankor only to be driven back by elgi magic. And still the lesson wasn’t learned. The elves weren’t a disorganised rabble like urk and grobi. They were an enemy united in purpose and command. If the dwarfs refused to acknowledge that and adjust to it, then they were doomed to an endless succession of hollow victories and bitter defeats.

The key to changing all of that was arrayed before him in the great hall. From a balcony set between the arms of Grungni and Grimnir, Gotrek gazed across the heterogeneous force that had travelled so far and so long to follow him into war. Over the years and decades, what had started as a trickle had grown into an avalanche.

‘Will you lead them?’ Morgrim asked. He was alone with his uncle on the balcony. Elgidum had led campaigns many times since the burning of Athel Maraya. He was often away from Karaz-a-Karak waging war in the High King’s name. When word of the siege at Barak Varr reached him, however, Morgrim had hastened back.

Gotrek knew his nephew had come to see if the High King needed him to lead an army to relieve the sea hold. When he’d found his liege arrayed for battle, it had surprised him. It had surprised many, but not Gotrek. He knew this day would come, the day when the High King must take to the field of battle.

Failure was what made it possible. The failure of King Varnuf. The failure of King Hrallson. The failure of King Valarik. The failure of King Brynnoth. The inability of any of the holds, Barak Varr, Karak Hirn, Karak Eight Peaks or Karak Azul, to fight off the elves on their own. The eyes of the entire Karaz Ankor were set upon Barak Varr now, watching and waiting.

What they would see was High King Gotrek leading an army not of Karaz-a-Karak but of dwarfs. They would see the united power of their people accomplish what was impossible to single kings and single realms.

They would see. They would learn.

‘Yes,’ Gotrek told Morgrim. ‘I will lead them. To hell or victory, I will lead them.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Siege of Barak Varr
344th year of the reign of Caledor II

Standing outside the command tent of Lord Draikyll, Liandra could see the immense reptiles circle above the Black Gulf before flying away. The dragons were leaving. The great drakes Lord Teranion had brought to help Lord Draikyll conquer Barak Varr were abandoning the fight, winging their way back to Tor Alessi. Watching them go, Liandra couldn’t shake the sense of longing they evoked. She knew the glory and majesty that came from communing with a dragon, of soaring through the skies on the back of a creature already ancient when the first elf set foot in Ulthuan. There was nothing else that could compare to that experience. In its wake, what was left wasn’t so much life as merely existence.

Just knowing that dragons were nearby had somehow made her feel less alone. Sometimes, if she exerted her powers to their utmost, she was able to brush against the consciousness of the dragons. It wasn’t like the dragonsong she’d shared with Vranesh, but it wasn’t nothing either. She could sense the overall moods of Teranion’s drakes, their general attitude to the battles they’d been asked to fight, the continual appeals to their indulgence. This war wasn’t their war, after all.

That was never more clear to the elves than it was now. The dragons were leaving Barak Varr, returning to their temporary lairs among the towers of Tor Alessi. It hadn’t been the dwarfs who’d made the dragons leave. It had been the asur.

For years now, Liandra had sensed the growing unease of the dragons. The reptiles were becoming distrustful of the asur. If not for the bond that persisted between rider and drake, they would have abandoned the siege long ago. That they had remained this long was a testament to Teranion’s persuasiveness, his ability to appeal to the reptilian sensibilities of dragons. It was too simple to think of a dragon’s mind in terms like pride and honour, but they were concepts that did evoke those parts of a drake’s essence that indulged the entreaties of a comparatively young, weak and fragile creature like an elf. It also held that if something kindred to pride and honour could exist in a dragon, then those qualities could be offended as well.

She knew Teranion had warned Draikyll about using the merwyrm fangs. The magic invested into the fangs was something upsetting to the dragons. Each time Ilendril or one of his confederates had employed one of the fangs to draw a merwyrm into the battle, the dragons had become that much more uneasy.

Draikyll had listened to the dragon riders for a time. It was lack of progress against the sea hold that finally changed the general’s mind. He had too many resources tied up in the Black Gulf to countenance defeat, yet with each passing year the risk that the dwarfs would make a concentrated attack against one of the elf cities grew. Tor Alessi could probably hold on its own, but he couldn’t be as certain of the others. If he were to lose Athel Toralien or Sith Rionnasc, Draikyll knew he’d be relieved by the Phoenix King. Caledor II would summon him back to Ulthuan in disgrace and all his hopes for advancement and prestige would crumble into dust.

At last, Draikyll threw his support behind Ilendril’s magic. The merwyrms were summoned – not one or two this time, but half a dozen of the beasts. They were turned against those citadels that had so stubbornly held out against the asur siege. The sea serpents tore down two of the bastions, using their scaly coils and immense strength to crumble the foundations and spill the towers into the Black Gulf. A third citadel had proven a different problem. The dwarf defenders, fully aware of what had been done to the other garrisons, prepared a particularly hideous surprise for the merwyrms. Among their arsenal must have been a supply of the same incendiary the airships had used over Kazad Mingol.

When one of the largest merwyrms began to coil around their citadel, the dwarfs within detonated their arsenal. The resultant explosion had thrown slabs of stone clear across the Black Gulf, some pieces even smashing into the great sea-gates of Barak Varr, denting their iron faces. The merwyrm had been thrown back into the water, its body wreathed in grisly green fire. Even under the waves, the green flames refused to be extinguished but instead continued to devour the serpent. For the better part of a day, the vast reptile had writhed among the shallows, lashing and flailing as its body was consumed.

As the merwyrm died, Liandra could feel the scorn in the hearts of the dragons. It wasn’t empathy for the merwyrm, but a withering disappointment in those who had sent it into the fight.

Liandra stepped inside Lord Draikyll’s tent, the brightly coloured pavilion he’d erected on the beach, and tried to explain to the general why the dragons were leaving. It was hard to couch her words in such a way that it didn’t sound like she was blaming him for failing to heed the warnings Teranion had given. Draikyll was too much like his king: he didn’t understand dragons. He thought they were nothing but beasts, living weapons to be pointed at the enemy and unleashed. It was hard for him to understand an intelligence older and wiser than that of the asur, an intelligence that didn’t fawn over ranks and titles with diligent devotion.

Ilendril was there as well, waiting until Liandra was through before speaking his piece.

‘With all due apologies to the Lady Liandra, but she makes my case for me,’ Ilendril stated. He pointed to the map laid out across the table at the centre of Draikyll’s tent. ‘Until now, the dragons have kept the dwarfs from making any kind of inroads by means of the mountain passes. They were even able to push Gotrek’s first expedition back. With them to watch and guard the overland passes, we’ve been able to concentrate on keeping the main tunnel network closed to the dwarfs.’

The general brought his golden rod of office cracking down against the table. ‘I am aware of the situation and what we’ve lost by losing the dragons.’ He reached over for one of the tiny flags that marked the positions the asur occupied, plucking it from one of the citadels the merwyrms had destroyed. ‘In trying to chase the rat from the pantry, we’ve left the gate wide open for the wolf to come in.’

‘Our hand is forced, my lord,’ Ilendril agreed, ‘but that may be for the best.’ He smiled at Liandra before returning his attention to Draikyll. ‘The restraint that has held us back is no longer feasible. We have to assault the stronghold and we have to do so in full force.’

‘Caerwal fought his way into another reservoir last week,’ Liandra reminded the general. ‘That makes seven he’s poisoned. The dams on the rivers have cut that supply as well.’

‘They can still draw water from the gulf itself,’ Draikyll stated. ‘I don’t know how the mud-diggers can drink the stuff, foul as it is with the runoff from their foundries and smelters, but they no doubt have their ways. Anything that might confound us, they find some way to do it. They can play for time here because they know that we can’t stay.’

Ilendril pointed his finger at the map, indicating the great sea-gates of Barak Varr. ‘The only choice is a full attack. I can have the remaining merwyrms set against the sea-gates. Their combined strength will tear them down and leave the very heart of the dwarf fortress open to us.’

Liandra shook her head. ‘The dawi have defences trained on those gates. Your serpents would be torn to pieces.’

‘Not before they pull down one of them,’ Ilendril stated.

In that moment, Liandra knew she should have gone back to Tor Alessi with Teranion and the dragons.

From the pass above the Howling River some fifty miles from Barak Varr, High King Gotrek watched as the dragons flew away, following them with a spyglass until they vanished in the mists of the mountains far to the north. He lowered the glass slowly, tapping it against the side of the marker stone at the edge of the pass. It seemed too good to be true, yet something in his gut told him that it was no trick. The drakk were well and truly gone.

One of his hearthguard came up to him, offering to relieve Gotrek of the glass if he was done with the instrument. Gotrek waved the warrior back. He knew his bodyguards were eager to get their king back into the safety of the tunnels, back down where the rest of the army was waiting. They didn’t like him exposing himself this way, up on the surface where elgi assassins and mages might find him.

Gotrek appreciated their concern better than they knew. At the same time, he was responsible for the vast army he’d assembled – the united command it had taken him so long to forge from the flames of war. It was in answer to his call that his subject kings had set aside their own ambitions and brought armies to join the assault against the elgi invaders. If they failed now, if this campaign ended in disaster, then the damage to the war effort as a whole would be incalculable.

That was why, when some rangers trickled down into the Ungdrin Ankor to report that the drakk appeared to be leaving, the High King himself determined to check the validity of their observations. Now, he felt the thrill of possibility rushing through him. For months the dwarfs had been waiting in the passes, hollowing out old mineshafts and linking them to the Ungdrin Ankor so that they might have a thousand boltholes to fall back to should the dragons descend upon them. To the south he knew the armies of Karak Azul, Karak Drazh and Karak Eight Peaks were likewise lying in wait. Further to the west would be the regiments dispatched from Ekrund and the settlements in the Dragonback Mountains. Northwards, warriors from Karak Hirn and Karak Izor were waiting, secreted among the hills. In all, it was a multitude such as the dawi hadn’t mustered in a century. Not under a single command.

Chirps, amazingly like those of a fox calling to its pups, rose from the trees at the mouth of the pass. Gotrek dropped down from his perch on the boulder, brushing off the hearthguard who moved to help him. He might not be as spry as he had been when driving the urk and grobi from the Karaz Ankor, but he was still robust enough to do for himself. Any of his subjects who thought otherwise were quite welcome to mention it to him and see how they enjoyed a cracked skull.

The signal from the dwarf pickets sounded once more, this time from within the pass itself. The hearthguard flipped down the visors of their helms, hefted their axes and formed a wall of steel and muscle around the king. Gotrek peered past their armoured shoulders to watch the pass. He soon saw a lone dwarf rushing up the slope. Unlike the hearthguard, this dwarf wore lighter armour of boiled leather and finely wrought steel chain. His helm was a simple steel bowl with a hammer-shaped spur projecting down over the dwarf’s nose. For an instant, Gotrek was reminded of Furgil, his captain of rangers, dead now over a century.

The ranger stopped a few yards from the wall of armed hearthguard. Dropping to his knees, he clapped one fist against his breast and bowed his head. ‘Tromm, my liege,’ he greeted the High King.

At a gesture from Gotrek, the hearthguard standing in front of him stepped away so that he might have an unobstructed view of the ranger. As they took up new positions, the warriors set down their axes and unslung the shields they carried on their backs. They kept their eyes on the ranger, ready to block any treacherous attack against the king. Tales of elgi illusions were too numerous to be discounted as exaggeration. If the elves could hide an entire fleet with their sorcery, making one of their assassins look like a dwarf should be comparatively easy.

‘You bring further news of the drakk?’ Gotrek asked.

The ranger raised his face and shook his head. ‘No, sire, we have seen no trace of the drakk down in the plains. The last we saw of them they were flying towards the Black Mountains.’

‘They kept flying,’ Gotrek said, slapping the spyglass against his armoured knee. ‘Ancestors alone know why, but they seem to have gone.’

The ranger’s face brightened and a smile took shape beneath his grimy black beard. ‘They may have been scared off by the fire, my liege,’ he said. ‘We have been watching the elgi call great serpents from the depths of the Black Gulf to destroy the bastions along the shores. Rather than give the beasts the satisfaction of killing them, one of the garrisons detonated their stores of blasting powder.’ The dwarf folded his hand into a fist, then splayed his fingers outwards to illustrate his report. ‘Green fire, my liege, just the same as they say consumed Kazad Mingol and killed the wyrms there.’

Gotrek was silent, stroking his beard as he digested this bit of information. ‘The elgi, can you see what they are doing? Has there been any change in their deployment?’

‘Yes, sire,’ the ranger answered. ‘The elgi seem greatly agitated. They’ve drawn many of the warriors they had deployed along the shores back towards Barak Varr.’

A grim chuckle rose from the High King. Everything the ranger reported bore out his gut instinct. He doubted if the elgi would be so perturbed by the destruction of one of their serpents, but the desertion of their drakk? That was another matter entirely. Without the dragons to hold the passes for them, the elgi knew there was nothing they could do to keep the dawi from marching out and joining them in battle.

Clearly the elf general’s dreams of conquest died hard. Rather than quit the field, the elgi was throwing everything into one final, brutal effort to take Barak Varr.

It was still a gamble. It might yet be some elaborate elgi deception, a trick to draw out the dawi host. But to play it safe and stand back meant watching Barak Varr be ravaged. The sea hold had already endured so much for so long; Gotrek couldn’t accept the shame of letting its people suffer still more.

‘Tell my thanes and captains to ready their troops,’ Gotrek declared. ‘Send messengers to the other kings. We march with the morning sun.’ He paused as he waited for the reckoners who’d accompanied his hearthguard out from the mines to copy his words to parchment.

‘The elgi have trespassed here long enough. Now, by Grungni, they will leave Barak Varr or remain forever in their graves!’

The great sea-gates of Barak Varr shuddered and groaned. Hundreds of feet high, wrought of iron and bronze, the gates had withstood the worst storms the Black Gulf could hurl against them. Now those titanic portals were confronted by a far different threat, a violence even the most malignant seas couldn’t match. The elgi had loosed their merwyrms against the gates, attacking the harbour entrance with all the elemental savagery the colossal reptiles could bring to bear.

King Brynnoth stood on the waterfront, his hearthguard arrayed around him, the seawyrm stylings of their armour tragically ironic given the nature of the enemy that now threatened them. High Thane Onkmarr, his armour black with soot from his inspection of the gate defences, stood once more beside his king.

Brynnoth pushed his finger into the hollow of his missing eye, trying to scratch the nagging itch. His remaining eye was fixed upon the battlements above the sea-gates. He could see the defenders clinging to the shuddering gantries behind the gates, their crossbows aimed through the vents to shoot down into the beasts battering at their defences. On the stone battlements themselves, gangs of shouting dwarfs pushed handcarts along a narrow railway. As each handcart reached the end of its run, it was pitched onto its side, casting a shower of molten lead down the face of the gate. From outside, it would look as though the enormous visages of the ancestor gods sculpted onto the gates were crying tears of fire.

‘Nothing could survive such violence,’ High Thane Onkmarr assured his king. A thrashing rumble against the gates proved him wrong only a moment later.

‘Whatever we do just seems to make them even madder,’ Brynnoth cursed. ‘By Grimnir, I’d almost welcome their damn drakk into my halls rather than fight these serpents!’

‘If the serpents break the gates, that will be the end of them,’ Onkmarr declared. ‘Half the hold’s warriors are here waiting to send those beasts to Gazul’s larder.’

Brynnoth turned his attention from the heights to the vast harbourage behind the gates. Regiments of crossbows stood poised along the waterfront, weapons trained upon the trembling gates. Catapults and ballistae had been brought from throughout the hold to form strongpoints within the harbour. Dozens of bolt throwers were ranged at the mouth of each street and passageway. Catapults had been assembled on the piers and docks, anywhere they might have the freedom of movement to hurl their burdens at the attackers. A great grudge thrower, immense blocks of carved stone engraved with runes of woe and havoc resting beside it, had been erected in the hastily demolished fish market, ready to cast a ton of stone at the first serpent that dared poke its head within the walls of Barak Varr.

‘We’ll stop them before it comes to that,’ Brynnoth declared. ‘I’ve already seen to it.’ He gestured at the small flotilla of ships poised at the end of the docks. Though no vessel had sailed from Barak Varr since the start of the siege, all had been maintained to a peak of perfection. Early on it had been with the promise that they’d be needed to hunt down the fleeing elgi when the siege was broken. Later, it had simply been a matter of pride and duty that the ships not be allowed to suffer from neglect.

‘My liege, think of what you are doing,’ Onkmarr said. ‘There are many who feel betrayed by your decree. After tending these ships for so long…’

‘Let them bring grudgement against a king if they dare!’ Brynnoth snapped.

Onkmarr shook his head. ‘Most of them won’t be able to. They’ve volunteered to pilot the ships on their last voyage.’

Brynnoth frowned at that last remark, scratching at his missing eye. ‘The sacrifice won’t be in vain,’ he declared. ‘Remember how it looked when we watched from the Durazon as the garrison of Bar-Bruz detonated their supply of Tharzharr and killed the elgi snake? The beast had been ripped to shreds and the elgi scattered like rats.’

‘The garrison and the citadel were lost to us,’ Onkmarr reminded him. ‘You should remember what else has been seen from the Durazon. Signal fires telling us that High King Gotrek is leading an all-out effort to break the siege.’

Brynnoth shook his finger in Onkmarr’s face. ‘That is exactly why we must act now. What pride is left to Barak Varr if it is left to others to rescue us? Gotrek is too soft to be High King, but if I let him rescue my kingdom, I’ll be beholden to him. I’ll be forced to recant my disfavour of him!’

The king and his thane watched as one of the gates began to distort inwards, a tremendous impact pounding a great dent in the portal. Brynnoth pointed at the stricken gate. ‘They won’t hold,’ he said. ‘But we have enough Tharzharr in those ships to blast the serpents into offal. It’s been stockpiled ever since the airships were dismantled.’

‘Maybe Engineer Strombak and his guild are right when they say Tharzharr is suspect, tainted by its association with the skryzan-harbark,’ Onkmarr said. ‘They want to do more tests with it to be certain of its–’

Brynnoth cut Onkmarr off with a scowl. ‘They want to test and test and test. I may have to suffer the timidity of Gotrek, but I don’t have to put up with it from my own vassals.’ Angrily, he waved his hand at the roof overhead. ‘Go! Climb back to the Durazon and look for sign of the High King. Leave the fighting to those with the stomach for it.’

Onkmarr bowed his head and hastily withdrew. He knew better than to test Brynnoth’s temper when the king had his mind set upon a purpose. He could only hope to regain his liege’s favour when he was in a less impassioned mood.

Brynnoth turned his eye back to the harbour, chuckling as he considered the ingenuity of his plan. Ten ironclads, loaded to the gunwales with Tharzharr. Fire-ships to ravage the elgi fleet. The plan had been to unleash them under the cover of night, but the elgi attack had forced a change in those plans. Now they would have to use one of the fire-ships to destroy the serpents at the gates and depend upon the shock and confusion from the explosion to cover the other fire-ships as they sailed out into the Black Gulf.

The shriek of twisting metal drew Brynnoth’s eyes back to the sea-gates. One of the cyclopean panels was sagging inwards, smashed out of all shape by the fury of the sea monsters. A great ophidian head squirmed through the rent, hissing and howling as it snapped at the dwarfs on the gantry below it. The monster’s scales were charred and blackened by the molten lead that had been poured down upon it. Dozens of bolts studded its hide, little rivulets of slimy blood oozing from the wounds. One eye was scorched shut, a blob of shapeless lead hanging from the rim of the socket.

Shouted commands brought hundreds of bolts flying at the monster. Shafts flung from bolt throwers stabbed into its hide; boulders and pots of pitch crashed against its body before splashing down into the water below. The grudge thrower moaned like some vengeful wraith as it cast its massive burden at the serpent. The rune-etched stone slammed into the beast’s head, snapping its jaw and smashing the side of its skull. With hideous reptilian vitality, the enormous merwyrm thrashed and writhed, its furious death throes widening the rent in the sea-gates.

As the first serpent died, two more thrust themselves into the breach, clamping their jaws and flipper-like claws onto the twisted edges of the fissure. Savagely, the brutes broke the locks binding the portals together. With a shuddering wail of ripping metal and crumbling stone, the titanic doors began to swing inwards.

Brynnoth raised his fist and a trumpeter blared the signal to the captain of the first fire-ship. The vessel’s engine shuddered into life, steam and smoke rising from its stacks as its paddle wheel churned into life. Brynnoth drew his spyglass from his belt, training it upon the ship. He could make out the captain behind the wheel, black beads of mourning already woven into the dwarf’s beard. Briefly, the king wondered if the captain was mourning his own sacrifice or that of his ship.

Then the king’s gaze was drawn to the lone figure down on the deck where the barrels of Tharzharr were piled. It wouldn’t have been strange to see a sailor there, ready to ignite the incendiary once the ship was in range of the enemy. But the figure who stood there wasn’t dressed as a sailor. Indeed, with his strange armour and the feathery cloak hanging from his shoulders, he looked like no dwarf of Barak Varr.

Weird as the dwarf’s appearance was, stranger still was the fact that Brynnoth recognised him. He’d met with this dwarf decades ago, offered him a reward for bestowing upon Barak Varr the perfect weapon with which to arm the skryzan-harbark. But it was impossible for him to be here. Drogor had died at Kazad Mingol when his airship was destroyed.

The strange dwarf seemed to feel Brynnoth’s eye on him, for he slowly turned around and looked back at the king. There was no question now – it was certainly Drogor’s face that smiled at Brynnoth.

Even the mounting fury of the serpents as they broke down the sea-gates couldn’t break Brynnoth’s fascination as he watched Drogor smash his fist against one of the barrels of Tharzharr. The wood splintered as though it had been struck by a hammer, spilling the black powder across the deck. The captain in the wheelhouse left his post, flailing his arms and shouting at Drogor.

Drogor paid the captain no attention, instead keeping his eyes on Brynnoth. Before the ship’s captain could reach him, the thane from Karak Zorn lifted his hand. Purple fire rose from the outstretched palm, flickering and dancing with a malignant energy.

Brynnoth’s eye went wide with horror as he understood what was about to happen. He glanced at the other fire-ships, all arrayed in a nice, neat little line. The lead ship hadn’t drawn so very far away. An explosion started there would most certainly spread to the others. The havoc the combined detonation would wreak on the harbour was something the king didn’t want to contemplate.

Brynnoth spun around to give the order to a nearby regiment of crossbows to strike Drogor down. But even as he turned, the thane slapped his burning hand against the spilled Tharzharr and green fire roared through the heart of Barak Varr.

There had been five hundred dwarfs in the advance when Morgrim led them out from the Ungdrin Ankor and into the tunnel connecting with Barak Varr’s lower deeps. Efforts to penetrate into the upper deeps had proven murderous, the elf resistance too well entrenched to dislodge. Unwilling to take such casualties without gaining any ground, Morgrim had left a few hundred warriors in the upper tunnels to keep the elgi occupied while he led his vanguard into the lower passages in the hope that they would find the enemy less established there. If they managed to force a way into the lower deeps, the thousands of warriors in the main body of Morgrim’s army would come surging into Barak Varr and block the enemy’s route back to the surface. More importantly, the sea hold would be rejoined to the great Underway connecting the whole of the Karaz Ankor.

Such was the plan, at least, but after several hours and dozens of casualties, Morgrim wasn’t certain how much progress they were truly making. The elves they faced were tenacious and as he led the vanguard into another underground gallery, the thane found that the enemy had more than swords and arrows to bring to bear.

Morgrim felt the walls shudder around him. Streams of dust and dirt rained down from the ceiling. Farther down the tunnel he heard the roar of crashing stone as part of the roof fell in. The cries of maimed and wounded dwarfs echoed down the passageway.

‘That wasn’t any natural tremor,’ Rundin Dragonslayer said as he helped Morgrim to his feet.

‘Aye,’ Morgrim agreed. ‘The old miners and runebearers with us would have given warning well in advance if it was. Some of them are like mine rats, able to feel the slightest vibration in the rock around them.’

Rundin spat on the tunnel floor. ‘Elgi witchery,’ he growled, running his thumb along the brand of Grimnir.

Morgrim nodded. ‘Their mages bleed like any other elgi.’ He turned away from the skarrenawi, peering down the tunnel at the dwarfs ahead of them. A few of those he could see were stumbling about, struck by something more significant than dirt and dust. ‘Wounded to the rear,’ Morgrim barked. ‘All the wounded,’ he added. ‘I want only fit fighters at the fore.’

There was some grumbling at that reminder of the thane’s orders, but he knew they would be carried out. A dwarf would fight with half his body stove-in by a troll unless told otherwise. Such obstinacy was commendable, but impractical. An army needed its best fighters leading the way, not a bedlam of wounded heroes.

Morgrim marched forwards with the twenty hearthguard his uncle had detached from his own bodyguard to defend the Elgidum. Beside him, the savage aspect of Rundin Dragonslayer made for an incongruous sight. Morgrim and the hearthguard bedecked in full suits of plates, the skarrenawi champion wearing only his chains and trousers. As unlikely as Rundin’s appearance was, Morgrim knew the hill dwarf to be one of the fiercest warriors in the Karaz Ankor. He’d seen that for himself during the battle for Athel Maraya.

‘I’m surprised you aren’t up ahead with the scouts,’ Morgrim told Rundin. ‘Or maybe you’ve changed your mind about seeking a heroic doom?’

Rundin shook his head. ‘Far from it. I just figure that the elgi are certain to throw their very worst at you since you killed their prince. When they do, I’m going to be there and maybe find a death worthy of my ancestors.’

Morgrim shared an anxious look with the closest hearthguard, then glanced back at Rundin. ‘That’s not exactly comforting.’

‘Depends how eager you are to die,’ Rundin shrugged. Abruptly the skarrenawi lowered his axe, stiffening like a hound scenting prey.

‘Elgi!’ a white-bearded runebearer gasped as he came rushing back down the tunnel. Fleet of foot and as cunning as stoats, the runebearers made their living carrying messages through the Ungdrin Ankor. Their work was hazardous in the extreme, fraught with all the dangers of the deeps, from prowling grobi to lurking spiders. Those who survived to become veterans of their trade quickly learned the disciplines of stealth and observation.

Morgrim waved the scout back and tightened his grip on Azdrakghar. The rune axe seemed to throb with anticipation as if it could sense the closeness of the enemy. Soon, Morgrim promised it, soon it would again taste elgi blood.

Dozens of Ironbreakers rushed ahead of Morgrim’s bodyguard, a precaution the thane had reluctantly agreed to after his vanguard encountered elgi mages early during the fighting. A strong axe and thick armour were small defence against sorcery as many of his warriors had discovered. As much as he longed to fight, Morgrim knew he couldn’t put himself at such risk. An army without a leader was just a mob.

Before Morgrim had gone another twenty yards down the tunnel, the crash of steel sounded from up ahead. A bright flash of arcane fire blazed across his vision as an elgi sorcerer discharged some spell against the warriors he’d sent ahead. A bitter smile worked its way onto Morgrim’s face. The Ironbreakers weren’t merely warriors; they were all experienced tunnel fighters, used to guarding the deeps beneath each stronghold against the creatures of the dark. The armour they wore was a wonder of the dwarfish forges, fashioned from cold-wrought iron and emblazoned with the rune of Stone to endow them with a protection beyond anything afforded by mundane steel. The enchantment of the rune rendered the Ironbreakers all but impervious to hostile magics. What had defied the crude conjurations of grobi shaman had likewise proven effective against elgi spells.

‘Hold.’ Morgrim raised his hand, warning the rest of his column to wait. The elgi were clever and sneaky, but there were some things that could be depended upon. One was their utter faith in their sorcery. When their magic failed to perform as they expected it to, it threw them into a panic. Confronted by a company of Ironbreakers, seeing his first spells fizzle away harmlessly, an elgi mage would compound his misfortune by throwing further enchantments against the dwarf warriors. A few moments of such frantic conjurations and the mage would be all but spent – and easy prey for the waiting dwarfs.

It wasn’t long before the Ironbreakers in the tunnel ahead began to shout ‘Khazuk!’ The elgi were so accustomed to hearing the war-cry that they little guessed it was a summons. It was the sign from Morgrim’s Ironbreakers that the sorcerous attack had begun to falter.

‘Forward, for Grungni and the High King!’ Morgrim howled, waving his axe overhead. The dwarf axemen and hammerers behind him down the tunnel roared in answer to his command. Like a single great beast of steel and sinew, hundreds of dwarfs surged up the tunnel and around the bend.

The Ironbreakers were fending off the assault of scores of elgi spears when Morgrim and his hearthguard swept around the corner. Arrows from hundreds of elf archers whistled through the darkness, glancing off shields and helms. A sphere of incandescent fire shrieked out from the shadows, crashing against one of the hearthguard and melting his torso as though it were wax. Bellowing in delight, Rundin charged off into the darkness to chase down the lurking elf mage.

Morgrim couldn’t spare any further thought for the death-crazed hill dwarf. A regiment of elf spearmen rushed to block off the tunnel and protect the flank of those who’d engaged the Ironbreakers. The thane was soon beset by elgi warriors thrusting at him with their broad-headed spears, trying to drive him back into the connecting passage.

The elgi effort was fruitless. The hearthguard were too disciplined to break before even their assault. Raising shields to cover their comrades, the hearthguard steadily forced the elves back. Foot by foot, the enemy was pushed down the tunnel. Whenever a spear drew back or an elgi shield lowered, a dwarf axe licked out, smashing armour and slashing flesh. One after another, the spearmen fell, crushed underfoot as Morgrim led his warriors onwards.

The elves, so swift and agile, were out of their element down in the tunnels. In the deeps it was strength and stamina that counted and the elgi simply couldn’t match the strength and stamina of the dwarfs. With their arrows and their magic, they might have held Morgrim’s warriors at bay, but in close quarters the odds were stacked against them. Too proud to accept the fact, the elgi fought on, those in the rear ranks marching forwards to take the place of their fallen kin.

The dwarfs cut them down with machine-like rhythm, as if farmers cutting wheat with their scythes. For what seemed hours, Morgrim and his warriors fought their way to the Ironbreakers. Scores of elves lay strewn in their wake before they reached their objective. When finally they had smashed their way through their foes, the reunited force pivoted, wheeling so that the whole width of the tunnel became an unbroken wall of dwarfish steel.

‘Khazuk!’ the dwarfs roared as they drove the remaining elves down the passageway. For a time, the elves tried to hold their position, spearmen forming ranks while the archers behind them tried to pick off individual dwarfs. It was the last gasp of an enemy who already knew it was beaten. When the dwarfs surged forwards, the line of spears was quickly broken. Once they were among the elf ranks, once their enemy’s formation was shattered, what had been a battle degenerated into a slaughter.

When it was over, Morgrim surveyed the carnage. The tunnel was a mire of elgi blood. He was shocked at such tenacity. It was true that the elves had fought with surprising ferocity before, but he’d never seen them mount such a stubborn defence. An elf was more likely to retreat if he were looking at certain defeat. These had fought on when there was no hope at all.

Rundin came rushing out from the darkness. The hill dwarf’s skin was puckered and burned where an elgi spell had scorched him, but he seemed oblivious to his hurt. ‘Elgidum,’ the champion cried out. ‘Come quickly!’

Something in the skarrenawi’s tone brooked no question. For a dwarf who’d accepted the inevitability of his own death to have such anguish in his voice sent a chill down Morgrim’s spine. Calling out to his hearthguard to attend him, the thane hurried after Rundin.

The Dragonslayer led Morgrim into a small guard hall off the main tunnel. The room was littered with dead dwarfs and a few elf corpses. Amidst the chaos, Morgrim saw the robed figure of an elgi sorcerer, his head cleft by an axe. Rundin’s, unless he missed his guess.

It wasn’t the mage that Rundin wanted Morgrim to see. Instead the hill dwarf showed him a wounded dawi leaning against the wall. Morgrim was taken aback when he stared down at the other dwarf. It seemed incredible, but he knew this injured warrior, though it had been more than a century since he’d seen him. It was his old friend Drogor, the adventurer from Karak Zorn who Prince Snorri had elevated to thanehood.

Morgrim started to kneel beside the bleeding dwarf, but Drogor pushed him back. ‘No time,’ he coughed, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. ‘You have to stop the elgi.’

Morgrim shook his head. ‘They have been stopped,’ he told Drogor. ‘We’re through. The Ungdrin Ankor joins Barak Varr once more.’

‘The reservoir…’ Drogor said, waving his hand towards a passageway almost lost in the shadows at the far end of the chamber. ‘The elgi are… poisoning the water.’

Morgrim cursed into his beard. That was why the elves had been fighting with such tenacity. They were playing for time, waiting so that their comrades could complete this atrocity. The elgi could be driven from Barak Varr and still kill dwarfs with poisoned water.

‘Have his wounds attended,’ Morgrim ordered one of his hearthguard. Without a second’s hesitation, he rushed down the passageway with Rundin and the rest of his bodyguard. He didn’t notice Drogor turn his head to watch him go, or the smile that formed on the dwarf’s bloodied face.

The reservoir was a crypt-like vault, its high ceiling festooned with a riot of pipes and pumps. At the centre of the chamber was a deep well, the natural pool surrounded by a stone platform. Pillars and columns stretched up the walls to sweep out in broad arches that further strengthened the ceiling, supporting it against the enormity of the hold above.

Morgrim’s fury sent him barrelling through the elf guards posted at the entrance to the vault. His arm was gashed by one of the elven blades before he was past them, but he refused to let his wound keep him back. A backhanded sweep of his axe sent the offending elgi sprawling in a burst of blood and teeth. He left Rundin and his hearthguard to finish the elgi warriors. His focus was entirely upon the reservoir and the elf lord standing beside it.

The elf lord turned at the sound of Morgrim’s violent entrance. For an instant there was fear on those sharp, arrogant features. His eyes darted from one end of the vault to the other, as though looking for a means of escape. The moment passed, however, and the fear was eradicated by an expression of monstrous hate.

‘I am Lord Caerwal of Athel Numiel,’ the elf snarled in perfect Khazalid. ‘Athel Numiel, whose beauty you animals put to the torch. Whose people you animals put to the sword.’ He reached to his belt, removing a golden coffer. ‘Now I pay you back in kind,’ he hissed.

Morgrim charged at Caerwal as he removed a lead flask from inside the coffer. In a blur, Caerwal’s other hand ripped his sword from its sheath and slashed at the oncoming dwarf. The edge of the slender blade slithered across Morgrim’s brow. Blood gushed from the cut, dripping into the dwarf’s eyes. As he reeled back, Caerwal’s boot kicked into his chest, pitching him against the wall.

‘Be honoured, dawi,’ Caerwal snapped. ‘It isn’t every mud-digger I let foul my sword with its greasy blood.’

‘Let’s foul it some more then!’ Morgrim roared, pushing himself off the wall and slamming into his foe. Caerwal screamed as the armoured dwarf crashed into him. Sword and flask alike flew from his hands as he was thrown backwards. The flask clattered across the platform to crash against the wall. The sword plummeted into the pool.

Morgrim had his arms wrapped around the elf lord as both of them struck the water. The weight of their armour sent both of them plunging towards the bottom of the pool – if a bottom there was. Caerwal’s hands ripped at his helm, finally pulling it free. The dwarf tightened his hold, feeling his enemy’s ribs crack. For an instant, the elf’s body went lax, then Caerwal’s hand was clutching at his beard. The elf tried to gouge his eyes with his other hand, pawing and ripping at him like some crazed beast.

Deeper and deeper they sank. Morgrim could feel the pressure pounding against his ears. He tightened his grip on Caerwal, his fury and disgust at what the elf lord had tried to do lending him a strength he didn’t realise he had. He could feel the instant he crushed the last breath from the elf’s lungs. A moment more and the hands pawing at him fell limp. With a surge of revulsion, Morgrim pushed Caerwal from him. He could feel the elf’s head slap against his boots as the armoured corpse sank down into the depths.

Kicking out, Morgrim tried to fight his way to the surface, using one hand to pull at the jagged wall of the well. The weight of his armour dragged on him, threatening to take him down into the deep. The thought of spending eternity in the company of a murderous wretch like Caerwal filled Morgrim with such horror that he drew the knife from his boot and began slashing the straps of his armour. Mail that had been in his family for generations fell away from his body, hurtling down into the watery darkness. Piece by piece, he cut his armour free, all the while feeling the torturous agony of his burning lungs.

After what felt like an eternity, Morgrim managed to claw his way up the side of the well. When his head broke the surface, when he drew the first breath of air into his starved body, he wondered if he’d ever felt anything more precious. Then he heard the cheer that sounded from the throats of his guards and knew that what he had accomplished, the foul villainy he’d thwarted, was more precious still.

Rundin hurried to the side of the ledge and helped lift Morgrim from the reservoir. The hill dwarf studied the thane’s state of undress as he climbed out of the water. In his panic to cut away the armour, he’d slashed his clothes and cut his skin.

‘Surely you aren’t trying to follow my example,’ Rundin said.

Morgrim wrung what seemed a deluge from his soaked beard before answering the hill dwarf. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘After all, it is said I am to kill a dragon. When that day comes, I may need to ask you for advice on how it’s done.’

Rundin laughed. ‘When that day comes, the only way you’ll get near a drakk is if I’ve failed to kill it and the beast has given me a glorious death.’

Lord Draikyll had come to Barak Varr seeking glory. Instead the general had found humiliation and disgrace. There was little question in anyone’s mind that he would be relieved of his command as soon as Caledor II learned of his failure. Too many resources had been squandered for anything less than a supreme victory. That would be the decision in Ulthuan.

From the stern of the Cormorant, Ilendril watched as the still-smoking sea hold receded in the distance. The siege was over. Threatened by no fewer than four converging dwarf armies and with reports of a fifth reinforcing the hold from below, there had really been no choice. Without waiting for the flames raging behind the sea-gates to subside, Draikyll had given the order to withdraw.

Barak Varr would be a shambles for decades and dwarf ships wouldn’t be harassing Sith Remora or any other coastal settlement any time soon. It was a limited success, to be certain and nothing that would appease the expectations of the Phoenix King. However, it might be enough to impress whoever Caledor II sent to replace Draikyll.

Ilendril would be certain to discuss the role the dragons had played in the asur defeat. He’d impress upon the new general that they couldn’t depend on creatures that wouldn’t obey orders but rather had to be persuaded to fight. They couldn’t rely upon the whims of beasts when planning strategy.

Yes, Ilendril thought, he’d pursue that line of reasoning. Then, he would propose an alternative.

Staring down at the fang of the merwyrm he had commanded in the last battle, Ilendril could see the potential for the future. A future when the power of the dragon riders was broken and the glory of exiles like himself was restored.

CHAPTER NINE

Heir to the Crown
386th year of the reign of Caledor II

‘The king is in a foul mood.’ Caradryel kept his voice low as he walked with Thoriol through the halls of Caledor’s palace in Lothern. ‘Please keep that in mind when you meet with him.’

Thoriol paused, glancing down the corridor at the royal guards they had passed, looking ahead to the ones at the far end of the hall. None of them were in earshot, but he knew better than to broach untoward subjects anywhere within the palace. The very walls had ears.

Caradryel was making a valiant effort to keep his speech from flirting with his true meaning and true intentions. The highborn diplomat considered King Caledor II to be a reckless fool, an adventurer more concerned with expanding his own personal glory than doing what was right for Ulthuan. There was a growing segment of the asur nobility who were sympathetic to that position. Lady Yethanial and Lord Athinol were but the point of the spear when it came to the disquiet among the highborn.

The expanding crisis in Elthin Arvan was making the situation worse. Lord Draikyll’s siege of Barak Varr had been characterised as a wasteful fiasco by Caledor himself. Draikyll was recalled, a new general dispatched to oversee the military situation in Elthin Arvan. Now even the replacement was being recalled, accused of too much timidity in his conduct of the war. The real reason, however, was the dragons.

The dragons. They had become both shield and sword to the embattled colonies. Draikyll had insisted that but for their defection at the siege, he would have taken Barak Varr. Just when he needed them most, the drakes had left the battle and returned to Tor Alessi. Now, the dragons had left even that bastion. They’d flown away, returning to the mountains of Caledor, back to their caves and caverns.

The dragons had left the war.

Thoriol could understand the king’s frustration. So much was dependent on the dragons keeping the dwarfs in check. Just the fear of a dragon swooping down on one of their armies had restrained the dawi for a long time. Now, that restraint would be gone. The enemy would feel emboldened to launch campaign after campaign against the asur, to exploit the distress of their weakened foe.

And at home, the voices of dissent saw in the retreat of the dragons a final condemnation against the war with the dwarfs. Yethanial and Athinol hoped that this would be the event to make Caledor sue for peace with the dwarf High King. Even if it meant withdrawing from the colonies.

The very thought of that made Thoriol sick inside. If they abandoned the colonies then they were betraying all those who had fought and died to defend them. He could sympathise with his mother’s call for peace, with Athinol’s insistence that they turn their full might against the lingering druchii in Naggaroth, but he wouldn’t accept that the price for such objectives would be forsaking everything so many had died for. Everything his father had died for.

‘I have an advantage over you in that respect,’ Thoriol told Caradryel. ‘No matter how ugly my uncle’s mood, he won’t have me executed.’

The jest hardly brought a smile to Caradryel’s face, especially in their current surroundings. ‘You are the heir of the House of Tor Caled,’ he agreed. ‘That makes you the king’s great hope for the future.’

It was a familiar warning. Caradryel didn’t have to say the rest – Thoriol knew the diplomat wouldn’t even whisper it while he was within the palace. What went unsaid was the cruel wisdom that, should the king’s favour turn against Thoriol then far from being Caledor’s great hope for the future, he would become the king’s fear for the present. The king’s suspicions were what had sent Imladrik back to the colonies. However much Caledor indulged Thoriol, the prince could neither forget nor forgive that fact.

King Caledor II was in the Amber Room of his palace. It was a fabulous chamber, an example of the opulence that attended the Phoenix King. From floor to ceiling, the room was covered in amber. The walls were coated in little polished hexagonal discs of the material, each carefully selected for hue and transparency. The ceiling was covered in tiles of a slightly deeper hue, their thickness creating the illusion of unreachable heights hidden just beyond the semi-translucent skin overhead. The floor was coated in a fine dust of the same amber, persistent enchantments endowing it with a strangely electric cohesion that always reminded Thoriol of the action of iron filings around a lodestone. The dust would sink beneath the tread of a visitor only to restore itself once the intruding foot had passed.

All the appointments within the chamber were adorned with amber, from chairs to cabinets to tables. Even the decanters and goblets were fashioned from amber, and the wine being poured into them by a servant arrayed in an amber-adorned doublet was a magically adjusted vintage designed to perfectly match the colouring of the room. The guards standing at attention on either side of the chamber were likewise arrayed in amber-coloured armour, its unusual sheen precipitated by spells from one of the mages of the king’s court. The same magic wouldn’t alter the white lion pelts the guards customarily wore, so while they were posted in the chamber they stood watch without the traditional symbol of their warrior brotherhood. Envaldein looked especially uncomfortable when Thoriol glanced his way. Briefly, the prince wondered if his uncle was aware of the insult he paid his guards by commanding them to set aside the distinction and honour of their traditions. If he did, then Thoriol wondered if the king even cared.

Caledor II was easy enough to find amidst his amber settings. He wore a long robe of silver and a heavy necklace of ruby and sapphire. Seated before a game table, he set his ivory pawns against the opposing ebony forces of Hulviar. The king’s seneschal, observing some whim of his lord, had adopted black raiment to echo the hue of his pieces on the game board.

The king turned from the game when a steward announced Thoriol. Caradryel, at the moment a mere auxiliary of the prince, went without introduction. He frowned slightly at the indignity, but was careful to compose himself when he felt royal eyes glance his way.

‘Dear nephew,’ Caledor smiled, rising from his chair and motioning for Hulviar to forsake his turn until such time as the royal presence could again concentrate on the game. The king gave Thoriol an appraising look. ‘You have heard about Lord Teranion’s betrayal?’ The fury in the king’s tone was subdued but unmistakeable.

Thoriol was careful about choosing how to answer. ‘It is my understanding that only the dragons left Tor Alessi. Lord Teranion and the other dragon riders stayed behind.’

Caledor flung the game piece he had been holding to the floor. ‘A pretence!’ he snapped. ‘The dragons leave and he stays behind? That is supposed to be some astonishing show of loyalty? I am supposed to be impressed by that?’ He turned to Hulviar. ‘I am certain his show of solidarity with the colonists will go far to easing their minds. Knowing that Lord Teranion stands with them will make the mud-diggers rip at their beards in terror. Honestly, can you think of anyone so useless as a dragon rider without a dragon!’

The moment he made the remark, Caledor froze. He turned back to Thoriol. No apology would ever leave those royal lips, but there was a trace of regret in the royal eyes.

Thoriol kept his expression neutral. His uncle’s barb – intentioned or not – had struck home. It was a long time since he had aspired to follow in his father’s footsteps. There was no use for it. Try as he might, no drake responded to his dragonsong. The king was right – there were few things more useless than a dragon rider without a dragon.

‘They are wilful creatures,’ Thoriol said. ‘They have a sort of pride and arrogance about them that I don’t think any asur can ever really understand. Lord Teranion could be as loyal as Envaldein or Hulviar and still be unable to compel the drakes to do something they have no intention of doing.’

‘Then what good are they?’ Caledor snarled. ‘By Asuryan, of what use is a weapon you can’t depend upon? What’s next? Must I look forward to the day when the dragons guarding the coast or hunting the druchii decide they’ve had enough and go crawling back into their holes?’

The king’s argument brought back to Thoriol Imladrik’s words. How many times had his father cautioned that dragons weren’t merely weapons, weren’t simply beasts to be goaded into battle? Enough times that Thoriol had grown sick with the hearing of it. Enough times that he had despaired of ever truly understanding.

‘They aren’t weapons,’ Thoriol said, echoing his father’s words. ‘They aren’t beasts or servants. They are allies whose help must be requested, never commanded.’

Caledor was silent, remembering only too well when he’d last heard such arguments – and from whom. It was Hulviar who chose to contest Thoriol’s words.

‘Allies? Friends?’ the seneschal scoffed. ‘What kind of ally is it who abandons our forces in the field? What kind of ally is it who deserts our outposts, leaves them helpless before the enemy? Perhaps our mistake was ever trusting the fidelity of such fickle creatures.’

‘They yet patrol the coasts and harry the druchii,’ Caradryel reminded. ‘Perhaps it would be better to hear Lord Teranion’s explanation for why the dragons left Tor Alessi before making any decision.’

‘If Teranion felt he had any worthwhile excuse to offer, he would have returned with his drake and made his explanation in person,’ Hulviar said. ‘Instead, he chooses to keep himself in the colonies.’

‘As a sign of solidarity,’ Caradryel retorted. ‘Our people in Elthin Arvan fear that they have been forgotten by Ulthuan.’

Hulviar smiled. ‘I have been discussing strategy with his highness. He is of a mind to dispatch a new general to Tor Alessi, Lady Kelsei of Tor Ferrek.’

‘With all due respect, my Lord Hulviar, I don’t think another general is going to assuage the concerns of the colonists,’ Caradryel observed.

‘If it is any concern of yours,’ Caledor told the diplomat, ‘Lady Kelsei will have two thousand troops arriving with her and more at her disposal as and when they can be safely detached from the campaign in Naggaroth.’

Caradryel blinked in surprise. ‘My liege, you would withdraw soldiers from Naggaroth?’

‘The fighting in Naggaroth is all but over,’ Hulviar said. ‘Malekith lacks the resources for real war. What we’re left with is simply to push the druchii back into the wastes and keep them there until they submit.’

‘Would it not be more prudent to bring the campaign to a conclusion before throwing more resources into the war against the dawi?’

A scornful laugh sounded from Caledor. ‘You are becoming a contrarian, Lord Caradryel. From you I hear that these dwarfs are too powerful to dismiss. Then, when I intend to send more forces into the war against them, I am told that they aren’t worth the effort.’

Caradryel knew when his counsel was of value and when his words were wasted. He could tell that the king had already made up his mind. Whatever he was told that didn’t agree with the decision he’d reached would be dismissed. Or, worse, deemed treasonous.

‘It won’t be enough,’ Thoriol said, stepping towards the king. ‘New generals, fresh troops, these have been sent to the colonies before. What they need in Tor Alessi is a more substantial gesture. A sign that Elthin Arvan is very much in the thoughts of Ulthuan.’

Hulviar smiled thinly. ‘Surely you aren’t suggesting that his highness set aside his duties here and journey to Elthin Arvan? It should be enough that the king has done so once already.’

Thoriol shook his head. ‘No, my Lord Hulviar, that is not what I am suggesting. The king’s duties must keep him in Lothern. I, however, have no such obligations.’ He turned and bowed to Caledor. ‘My liege, permit me to sail to Tor Alessi as your emissary. I need have no official position or duties. My presence alone, the presence of the king’s nephew, will be enough to tell the colonies that they are still in the hearts and minds of Ulthuan. I will be the living symbol of your promise that they will not be abandoned.’

As he spoke the last words, Thoriol could see Caradryel grow tense. It would be an interesting report he’d have to give his mother and her cadre. They’d thought to use him to speed the War of the Beard to an end. He would still achieve that purpose, but he would do so in a way that wouldn’t make a mockery of his father’s sacrifice.

The first step would be getting himself to the battlefield. For that, Thoriol would need the king to indulge him one more time. He could see the uncertainty in Caledor’s eyes, the hesitance of his uncle to commit his heir.

‘It would be imprudent–’ Caradryel started to object. Before he could finish speaking, Thoriol received the unexpected support of Hulviar.

‘I must disagree,’ the seneschal said. ‘Prince Thoriol makes a good case for why he must put in an appearance at Tor Alessi. The colonists need something to inspire them, and the prince is quite right when he says it will take more than a new general and a few regiments.’ Hulviar bowed to the king. ‘For a time, my liege, I think Prince Thoriol should be sent to rekindle the morale of your subjects. To let them know that the eyes of the Phoenix King are upon them.’

Caledor looked as though he would demur. There was a hint of worry on his normally proud features. Unexpectedly, he glanced at Caradryel, almost as though begging the diplomat to offer some rationale that would give him cause to defy the united counsel of both his seneschal and his heir.

‘Please, my liege, allow me to perform this service,’ Thoriol asked, dropping to one knee. ‘For too long I have sat idle. I would not feel useless to my king.’

It was that one word and the memory of his own thoughtless speech that decided Caledor. ‘You will go to Tor Alessi as my representative,’ he told Thoriol. ‘Lady Aelis will be told to extend to you the same courtesies and considerations she would to me.’ He stared into his nephew’s eyes. ‘Restore their courage, then come back to me.’

The king turned and withdrew from the Amber Room. As he departed, Thoriol thought he heard his uncle whisper something.

What he thought he heard the king say was, ‘Elthin Arvan has already taken too much from House Tor Caled.’

Reaching up into the misty clouds, the gargantuan peaks of the Worlds Edge Mountains stretched like a wall across the countryside, a megalithic barrier separating the Old World from the Dark Lands beyond. Great stands of pine and spruce clung to the slopes, rising up from between the craggy rocks. Patches of scrubby grass and wizened bushes struggled to find purchase in the shelter of boulders and trees, eking out a precarious existence just between the hills below and the snowline above.

There were twenty of them, climbing down the side of the mountain with a nimbleness that made the native goats seem as clumsy as drunken orcs. Not a branch or bramble did they disturb, not so much as a pebble was kicked loose by their passage. There was barely any sound at all, only the rare rustle of a cloak as the wind pulled at it or the rasp of a boot against a patch of sand. So silently did they move that the birds singing in the trees didn’t skip a note.

Watching them from the mouth of a tunnel not a hundred yards away, Morgrim appreciated the enormity of the danger the intruders posed. Elf spies who could move with such eerie speed and silence were a threat that couldn’t be understated. It was bad enough that the elgi could spy upon the Karaz Ankor with their sorcery, but for them to feel at liberty to dispatch spies so deep into dwarf lands betokened a boldness that couldn’t be tolerated. These spies had to be exterminated. If a single one returned to their cities, if the elgi for an instant thought they could trespass with impunity…

Morgrim closed his hand about the hilt of Ifulvin. Just touching the sword reminded him of his purpose. He was Elgidum. It was his destiny to drive the elves from the Old World and cast them back into the sea.

‘You can afford to show them no quarter.’ The advice came in a whisper from his left. Drogor Zarrdum, his old friend from Karak Zorn. The thane had been indispensable to him since they’d been reunited in the deeps below Barak Varr, both as a companion and as an advisor.

Even so, at times Drogor’s relish at slaughtering elgi was a bit unsettling to Morgrim. Certainly the elgi were an enemy to be fought and conquered, but there was a difference between battle and bloodlust – a difference that Drogor sometimes didn’t appreciate.

‘Let them get a little closer,’ Morgrim whispered back. He turned his head, glancing down the tunnel. There were thirty dwarfs behind him, all with axes at the ready. Across from them, in another mineshaft, were a dozen crossbows. Further down the slope was a patrol of rangers, the ones who had found the first traces of elgi spies.

It was still confusing to Morgrim why the elves had marched across half the countryside to reach the Worlds Edge Mountains and then made their ascent in such a forlorn place. They weren’t near Karak Kadrin or Karak Ungor – there were no major passes or trade routes of any consequence for leagues in any direction. Even the Ungdrin Ankor didn’t run beneath this part of the mountains. There just seemed no tactical purpose for what the elgi were doing here. They were too few to be establishing any kind of base from which to stage future operations and even if they were, why would they be leaving so soon after making their assent? The rangers had discovered them only a few days ago.

Morgrim chided himself for asking so many questions. They were elgi and it was only right that their treacherous ways should be strange to a dwarf. Wasting energy trying to figure them out was as fruitless as trying to talk to a goblin. The only understanding that could ever exist between them was that of steel!

The violence of his own thoughts surprised Morgrim. Where had such rage come from?

There was no time to question his motives. One of the elves descending the slope abruptly lost his footing. The elgi recovered with a grace and nimbleness that amazed the onlooking dwarfs, but when their foe’s slide ended, the elf was in a half-crouch and staring directly into the mine. His green eyes were staring directly at Morgrim.

‘Attack!’ Drogor shouted, shoving Morgrim to one side as the elf threw a leaf-shaped knife at him. The blade caught Drogor in the breast, the impact knocking him back and into the warriors surging up from the rear of the tunnel.

‘Attack!’ Morgrim took up the cry. Drawing Azdrakghar, he rushed at the elf who’d thrown the knife. The elgi was already ripping his own sword from its scabbard. Above him, on the slope, the other elves were beset by a volley from the lurking crossbows. Four of their number were cut down, two more staggering from their wounds. The others drew their bows or pulled their swords, reacting to the sudden ambush.

Morgrim could see his warriors fanning out, hastening up the slope to engage the other elgi. They would need to draw the attention of their enemy while the crossbows reloaded. Until then, they would be vulnerable to any charge the elgi mounted. The dwarf warriors had to prevent that from happening.

The elf swordsman was left to Morgrim. There was that much respect that lingered between elgi and dawi that the challenge from one warrior to another would be honoured. Morgrim closed upon the grey-cloaked elf, noticing the seemingly effortless way his foe maintained his footing as he manoeuvred on the uneven ground. It was a stroke of despicable luck that this elgi had tripped up above and sprung the ambush.

Morgrim circled the elgi, waiting and watching for an opportunity. The elf was like a panther, every muscle in his lean frame tensed to spring. Where would the attack fall? When would the warrior decide was the moment to strike? The thin, angular face that glared at Morgrim from the hood of the cloak gave no clue to the thoughts and intentions stirring in the elgi’s mind. There was only the stamp of hate and the contemptuous disdain most asur felt for peoples they considered beneath them.

That disdain acted as a warning to Morgrim. He noted the patch of sand, saw the way the elf’s foot squirmed when crossing it. From that moment, he knew what to expect. The elf made a few thrusts at him, flashing feints that the thane already knew weren’t intended to strike true. His own retorts with his axe were equally half-hearted, just enough to keep his enemy on edge.

When the elf’s boot rolled under the little ridge of sand his foot had created, Morgrim threw up his left arm to shield his face. The sand kicked up by the elf spattered across the fending arm, but failed to blind him as the foe had intended. At the same instant, the elf was lunging in with his sword, planning to open Morgrim’s throat. He tried to adjust in mid-charge when he realised his foe could still see, but by that time it was too late.

Azdrakghar struck the elgi’s waist, the rune axe tearing through the light elven mail to crunch deep into the body beneath. Blood and bile spilled from the grisly rent in the elf’s side as Morgrim tore his weapon free. The stricken warrior collapsed at his feet, pawing at the rocks for a moment before falling limp and cold against the earth.

Morgrim was just starting to turn from his stricken foe when a sound from behind him brought him spinning about. He froze in mid-swing, ashamed that he’d almost buried his axe in Drogor’s head. His friend noted his alarm and laughed.

‘If I’d known you’d be this glad to see me I would have left the elgi knife where it was,’ Drogor said. He jabbed his thumb into a tear in his breastplate. The elgi sometimes put enchantments on their blades that allowed them to pierce iron as neatly as flesh. Drogor had been fortunate this blade had penetrated no deeper than it had.

Morgrim shrugged. ‘It was meant for me anyway,’ he said.

‘All the dawi will cry if you fall, my friend,’ Drogor cautioned him. ‘If Elgidum dies, it is a tragedy. If Thane Drogor of Karak Zorn dies… none will even notice.’

Morgrim was already beginning his climb to join the fighting above. It seemed the worst of it was already past. A dozen elgi were already down. Three others tried to make their escape through the dwarf ambushers, but as they fled down the slope they found a surprise waiting for them. The rangers, concealed as effectively as any elgi scout, emerged from hiding to intercept them. It wasn’t long before the only elgi left alive on the mountain were those too badly wounded to fight.

‘See to the wounded,’ Morgrim told his warriors when he rejoined them. He scowled when he saw the dwarfs ignoring the surviving elves. ‘Attend the elgi too,’ he warned.

‘They will only slow us down,’ Drogor said as he watched a pair of rangers trying to staunch the stream of blood coursing from one elgi warrior’s mangled leg. ‘We should finish them now. There may be other spies about.’

Morgrim frowned at his friend’s bloodthirstiness, but decided to put a different rationale for his distaste. ‘That’s why I want prisoners,’ he said. ‘I want to know if there are others in the mountains.’

Drogor smiled and shook his head. ‘You won’t learn anything from these ones,’ he declared. Stooping, he reached down to the bleeding elgi and opened the elf’s mouth. Blood bubbled over the captive’s lips. With a start, Morgrim understood what Drogor meant. Each of the prisoners had bitten through his own tongue when he found himself unable to fight further.

‘Bring them just the same,’ Morgrim ordered when he recovered from his shock. ‘We will leave them in Karak Kadrin.’

‘Why? They are no use to us,’ Drogor persisted.

Morgrim shouldered his axe and stared at the maimed elves. ‘That’s exactly why we have to take them with us.’

Shrugging, Drogor turned back to help the rangers attend the wounded elves. For a moment, he stared at a stand of thorn bushes. Quickly he looked away and helped the rangers carry one of their prisoners down the slope.

It was only hours after the last dwarf had withdrawn that a figure emerged from below the thorn bushes. As he threw back his cloak, the garment shifted hue, changing from the mottled black and brown of the thorn bushes to become a dusky grey. The elf gave only a brief inspection of the dead strewn about the slope. The dwarfs had taken their own dead with them and made certain that the elves they left behind were corpses.

Only Ashelir had escaped their notice. It stung his pride that he had hidden himself while so many comrades fought and died, but it would have been a greater disgrace to have failed in his mission.

Reaching under the breast of his tunic, Ashelir felt the ugly piece of bone they’d come so far and risked so much to retrieve. Ilendril assured them it was worth the dangers, that it would change the whole war.

Ashelir cared little for any of that. All he cared was that he was being brought one step closer to the end of his own private war.

Revenge with honour, a dream cherished for so long, would soon be within his grasp.

Thoriol’s arrival in Tor Alessi was a bitter one for him. He was greeted with fanfare befitting a conquering hero. Bright pennants bearing the heraldry of Tor Caled fluttered from the spires atop every tower in the city. Flowers were strewn across the piers when the fleet from Ulthuan pulled into port. Crowds swarmed the streets, eager and jubilant, thrilled beyond words to set their eyes upon Prince Thoriol.

He’d only been partially right when he made his case for returning to Elthin Arvan before the king. Tor Alessi was revitalised by his arrival, all the dread and despair caused by the desertion of the dragons forgotten as he disembarked. But it wasn’t Thoriol they celebrated. It was the memory of his father, the memory of Imladrik who had come and saved Tor Alessi from the dwarfs.

Grim memories of that battle returned to Thoriol as a chariot drawn by white horses carried him through the streets. In his mind’s eye he relived those long-gone days when the smoke of war had choked the sky. He could hear the screams of the dying, could smell the stink of scorched flesh. He could see the dwarfs, massed before the great walls like a sea of steel, their axes glistening in the sun.

He’d nearly died upon those walls when the dwarfs breached them. If not for his father ordering the very best treatment the city could offer his wounded son, Thoriol would not have survived. When his chariot passed the shrine in which the ashes of the siege’s dead were entombed, he thought how easily his remains could be there, lying with Baelian and all the others who had been slain defending Tor Alessi.

The asur had extended the walls after that. The dwarfs had tried to attack since, but never in such numbers as when Morgrim Elfdoom had come howling at the gates. Never again had the dawi managed to batter their way into the city. New battlements had been raised two hundred yards before the old walls, a great curtain of stone and mortar twenty feet thick at its base and sixty feet high. Between the curtain and the old wall was a killing field especially prepared for any dwarf who managed to force his way through. Devoid of even so much as a shrub to hide under, the grassy expanse between the walls had been carefully measured so that archers posted on the inner wall could immediately know the distance to any target from where they stood and loose their arrows with unwavering precision.

There was no question in anyone’s mind that the dawi would come again. The dwarfs were a stubborn, vindictive people. They could accept no compromise and wouldn’t abandon a grudge. They’d come again and again and again. Most everyone in Tor Alessi was resigned to the fact. Many felt the only way they could ever know peace was if the dwarfs were completely exterminated. Even the once passive Lady Aelis, ruler of Tor Alessi, shared that sentiment. After meeting with her, Thoriol realised that his mother had one less ally in the colonies. Yethanial would need to cast her net farther afield if she thought she’d find support for her position in Elthin Arvan. For the colonists, the dreams of building a new life were too grand to sacrifice for a peace that could only come by destroying those same dreams.

It was late in the evening before Thoriol was able to extricate himself from the gauntlet of receptions and soirees that were held in his honour. It was somewhat ironic that Lady Kelsei, now commander of the colonial armies, was barely feted at all by the nobles of Tor Alessi. Tomorrow, tomorrow they would repent not extending full courtesies to her, but this night all they could think of was the hero of the hour.

The hero who as yet had accomplished nothing greater than simply staying alive.

Every passing moment spent among the festivities, listening to the people of Tor Alessi toast his health and express their gratitude had felt like an eternity to Thoriol. They weren’t celebrating him; they were celebrating the shade of his father.

That couldn’t have been made clearer to Thoriol than with the quarters he had been given. He had been afforded one of the smaller towers, some distance from the Tower of the Winds where the Council of Five gathered, and where Kelsei would have her headquarters. Thoriol knew this building quite well, it was as vivid in his memory as his mother’s home in Tor Vael, or his father’s citadel in Kor Evril. This was the place Imladrik had taken for his own when he arrived in Tor Alessi. It had been kept as a memorial to him ever since.

The locals called it the Tower of the Dragon.

Thoriol dismissed the servants and Sea Guard who sought to attend him as he made his way into the tower and mounted the steps to his chambers. He was weary, worn out from all the pomp and circumstance of his arrival.

No, he corrected himself, scowling into the silvered mirror standing above the clamshell washbasin in his bedroom. It wasn’t ceremony and society that had worn him down. It was trying to smile and maintain a facade of cheer as he listened to everyone around him praising him, lauding him as the great hope of their city and the colonies. Every word, every gesture mocked him more cruelly than he could have believed possible. He had come to Tor Alessi with such a clear vision of what he had to do; now that he found so many ready to follow him, it made him question his motives and his plans.

Who was he to lead anyone? The accident of blood and birth wasn’t enough. There needed to be more than that. He only had to think of his uncle Menlaeth, he who was crowned Caledor II, to know that birthright didn’t mean one was worthy of power.

Thoriol turned away from the mirror and walked across the richly appointed room. He frowned when he saw a tattered old banner bearing the heraldry of Tor Caled hanging on one of the walls. What battle had the standard been recovered from, he wondered. What great deeds had Imladrik done that day?

Glass-paned doors pivoted outwards at the prince’s touch, opening upon a broad balcony. From this height, he could look out across the waterfront and watch the ships returning to the harbour. Even now the docks were bustling with activity, gangs of stevedores helping to unload the supplies that had arrived along with Lady Kelsei’s warriors. On the point, a great lighthouse threw its brilliant beam out across the waters, beckoning any wayward fishermen or merchants landwards.

Thoriol followed the path of the beam, but when it illuminated a patch of rock rising out beyond the mouth of the harbour, he found himself captivated. He walked to the edge of the balcony, hands closing tight about the railing. Leaning forwards, he kept his eyes focused in the direction of the rock, waiting for the beam to illuminate it once more.

The light revealed a mouldering heap of burned, blackened armour, mail too small and stout to ever close about the body of an elf. The jumble of armour littered the rocky island, strewn in heaps and mounds, spilling into the waves slapping against the craggy shore. Sometimes a charred skull or bit of bone was thrown into sharp relief by the probing light.

Caledor was wrong to think all the dragons had deserted Elthin Arvan. There was one who had remained, though the fact would hardly reassure the king. Ever since Prince Imladrik’s death, his steed Draukhain had refused any overture made by the asur. Even Lord Teranion and the other dragon riders had been unable to appeal to the enormous drake. Draukhain had lost its taste for the war when Imladrik died. In its place had arisen a savage and unstoppable thirst for revenge.

Draukhain hunted on its own, ranging far and wide over the countryside. Thoriol heard the drake would sometimes be gone for months on end, then come flying back over the harbour, its claws filled with scorched dawi armour. It’d drop them on the spit of rock, piling them about the stone rising from the island’s centre. It was a stone the dragon had brought from far away, an obelisk that had been salvaged from the ruins of Oeragor. Those who had known the city before its fall said it was the first stone that had been raised there and upon it was chiselled the name of Imladrik and his title, Master of Dragons.

The people of Tor Alessi thought of Draukhain as a loyal dog, mourning its master’s memory. Thoriol knew better than that. He might never have shared the dragonsong with a drake, but he knew the majesty of the creatures. Their minds were far beyond those of beasts, alien and strange to any kind of true understanding, even for the wisest of asur. Only the dragon riders came close to any kind of communion with them, and even then it was affectionate indulgence on the part of the dragon, not a true rapport among equals.

Only two elves had ever been accepted by the dragons as equals. Caledor Dragontamer, who had walked through the mists of legend, and Imladrik, who had died on the end of a dwarfish axe.

As he looked out upon the island, at the heaps of armour Draukhain had brought there, Thoriol felt ashamed. Everyone expected him to live up to his father’s memory, but how could he ever match the legacy of a hero who could move even a dragon to sorrow with his passing?

‘The dwarfs call him Uzku – the “Crawling Death” – because his wings are ruined and won’t let him soar high among the clouds.’ Lady Liandra stepped out from the room behind him. She looked much as he’d last seen her, almost two centuries ago. A little more weathered perhaps, some of the heat in her eyes dimmed by regret, but she was still the noblewoman he remembered, the one who’d ridden Draukhain back from Oeragor with his father’s corpse clutched in the dragon’s claws.

Thoriol looked at her only briefly before returning his gaze to the island. ‘You were the last one he ever suffered to ride him,’ he said. ‘Is it so painful for them, when the link is severed?’

Liandra joined him beside the rail, following his gaze out to the rock. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It is nothing like the pain we feel if we lose them. To them we are temporary, transitory things. They may become fond of us, feel sad when we are gone, but they know we aren’t enduring. Vranesh was fond of me, cared about me, but she didn’t love me.’ She pointed out to the morbid island. ‘He loved your father. That is why he stays, why he hunts the dwarfs. There’s an empty hole inside him where your father used to be. He’s trying to fill that emptiness the only way he can.’

They were silent for many minutes, the cold sea breeze whipping about them, the briny tang of the harbour stinging their noses, the distant shouts of sailors and stevedores drifting up to them. ‘You bribed your way in, of course.’ Thoriol didn’t look at her when he made the statement.

‘It was the most discreet way to see you,’ Liandra confessed. ‘You are the lord of the hour and all eyes are on you right now. If I’d come to visit you openly, that information would have spread like dragon fire.’

‘It is easy to understand how that might become a scandal,’ Thoriol said. ‘My father’s mistress having a liaison with his son.’

Liandra’s voice was strained when she replied to his jab. ‘I was thinking of the king’s spies.’

Thoriol turned and glared at her. ‘Of course. Lady Liandra always conducts herself with propriety.’

‘If you expect me to apologise for loving your father, then you’ll be waiting until the Pale Queen beckons you into her halls,’ Liandra snapped back. ‘I came to visit you because I thought we shared a common purpose. I thought we had mutual ambitions.’

‘Perhaps we do,’ Thoriol conceded, ‘but that doesn’t make us friends.’

‘Nor does it have to,’ Liandra said. ‘Duty and purpose often draw enemies together. Our differences can’t be allowed to affect our obligations.’

Thoriol nodded. ‘That much we can agree on.’ His expression became thoughtful for a moment, some of the hostility draining from his eyes. ‘You aren’t my enemy, Liandra,’ he said. ‘I don’t hate you the way I do the dawi or my uncle. I’m just… envious, I suppose. Envious of all those years when my father was taken from me and sent here, with you. Envious that you were there with him when he died.’ He turned and waved his hand out towards the island. ‘I’m envious that you were able to share that with him, that you were a dragon rider, like he was.’

Thoriol shuddered as he turned and withdrew from the balcony. ‘I think I would have given anything to have made him so proud.’

The spires and domes of Athel Toralien were glimmering in the last light of the fading sun when Lord Ilendril left his luxurious chambers and hurried by hidden stairs and secret corridors into the cellars far beneath the roots of his tower. The message his steward had brought to him was one he’d been anxiously awaiting for weeks. Now, at last, he could allow his worries to abate. In just a few moments he would have what he’d coveted for so long. Another concealed door, a final flight of steps and he was down in the vault. He barely noticed the other elves who awaited him, his interest at once settling upon the dusty, road-worn figure of Ashelir.

Ilendril clapped his hands together in delight when Ashelir threw back the silken covering and exposed the long, curved length of bone. The highborn’s hand slid down the side of the object, savouring the rough caress of its pitted surface. With an expression almost of rapture, he turned and looked at Vithrein.

‘Well?’ Ilendril demanded.

The gaunt mage closed his eyes, his lips moving in a whispered incantation. A chill swept through the room, a crypt-like cellar deep beneath Ilendril’s tower in Athel Toralien. The lanterns flickered as unseen forces pulled at the flames. Rats and spiders scuttled off into the shadows, repulsed by the aethyric stirrings around them.

Vithrein’s shoulders sagged. He seemed to wilt into the chair. His attendants, mages formerly in the service to the late Lord Caerwal, hurried forwards to help him. Vithrein waved them back, somehow summoning the strength to give them a reassuring nod. Gradually, he lifted his head and faced his patron.

‘The beast lives. Ancient and powerful,’ Vithrein said. ‘There are some in Ulthuan mightier, but few in Elthin Arvan that are its equal.’

Ilendril’s face beamed with delight. Soon, soon a long-cherished dream would be realised. He turned away from the recuperating Vithrein. Snatching up the curved bone from the table, he marched across the dank crypt to the steel cage resting against one of the walls.

The inmate of that cage stirred as she saw the asur lord draw close. The hate that shone in her eyes brought a cruel laugh from Ilendril’s lips, the sardonic mockery of one who hears a snake hiss at him and knows he is safe because he’s already pulled its fangs.

Drutheira was thin and wasted, her hair matted and torn. A simple shift covered her pallid body, clinging to her like a funeral shroud. The crude garment did nothing to conceal the garish glyphs that had been tattooed across her flesh. Hands and feet, forehead and breast, all were marked by needle and ink. Wards of great potency drawn by a loremaster of Hoeth, the tattoos served to blunt the witch’s magical abilities, to cut her off from her aethyric attunement.

‘I will soon need your services again,’ Ilendril told his prisoner. ‘How much torture will it take to make you submit this time, I wonder?’ He glanced over at Ashelir. ‘I was impressed at the restraint your son displayed the last time. Perhaps I will give him a freer hand.’

Drutheira laughed at Ilendril and at the fury she saw in Ashelir’s face. ‘No torture this time, asur dog. I’ll be happy to speed you to your doom.’ She lifted her hand as far as her shackles would let her and pointed to the thing in Ilendril’s grasp. ‘The creature that belongs to will kill you. You are a fool to even think you can command it. It will kill you, Ilendril, but it will make you know terror first.’

Ilendril sneered at the druchii’s threats. ‘Instruct Vithrein as you did before. Work your magic, witch. When the dragons are broken, I may even find it in me to be merciful.’

Drutheira laughed again. The druchii were a people alien to the concept of mercy. In Ilendril, she recognised a kindred spirit.

She also saw an elf racing headlong to embrace his own doom.

CHAPTER TEN

Blood of the Dragon
393rd year of the reign of Caledor II

High above the vastness of Elthin Arvan, Lord Ilendril watched as the sprawling greenery of Loren Lacoi stretched away across the horizon. In the distance he could see the sombre, brooding peaks of the Arluii, what the dwarfs called the Grey Mountains. From this height, the broad Anurein river was just a narrow ribbon of silver snaking its way across the landscape. If he strained his eyes, he fancied he could see the farms and vineyards supporting Sith Rionnasc away to the north. Of course, he had no business in the north this day. It was into the dwarf-held south that his destiny led and towards which his steed bore him.

Power! Ilendril had never appreciated just how absurd and juvenile his concept of that word was. Not until Vithrein and the other mages had enchanted the dragon-fang for him. It was only then that the elf lord understood what it meant to truly have power.

He barely felt the cold of the wind as it whipped through his hair and set his cloak billowing out from his shoulders like ebon wings. The tatters of cloud that flashed past left little beads of condensation on his armour, dripping from the steel plate in slithering rivulets, soaking the silken finery of his undertunic and gloves. The air was thin, burning as he drew it down into his hungry lungs. Yet these were but trifling annoyances, obstacles that would be overcome with the proper application of invention and enchantment. Of far more importance was the fact that he’d succeeded.

The reek of wyrm filled his nose, a thick, musky, sulphurous smell that seemed to sink into his skin. Ilendril could feel the dragon’s pulse pounding through its colossal body, his bones vibrating in harmony to the reptile’s heart. When the beast beat its wings, flexed its claws or turned its head, the elf lord’s body shivered at the working of the wyrm’s titanic muscles. When he commanded the dragon to vent a blast of fire from its jaws, it seemed to Ilendril that the entire world was engulfed in the roaring flames.

This was power – might beyond that of simply commanding vassals and armies. Strength beyond that of hoarded wealth and lands. It was a power more primitive and raw than even the mage’s mystic arts. To harness a dragon was to control a force that was ancient when the gods themselves were new.

Ilendril exulted in the primordial might of the dragon he rode. He could well believe Vithrein when the mage claimed this beast was among the largest and most powerful in Elthin Arvan. Almost two hundred feet from snout to tail, wings that seemed to blot out the sun when they were unfurled, claws like lance heads and fangs like daggers. The wyrm was covered in crimson scales as thick as steel plate, and massive horns swept back from its head to offer further protection to its sinuous neck.

Ilendril closed his hand about the dragon-fang hanging around his neck on an ithilmar chain. Such a small thing, yet it connected him to the wyrm on a level the dragon riders of Caledor could only dream of. It was true, he didn’t have that sense of communion the dragon riders always claimed to share with their steeds. He couldn’t make sense of the wyrm’s mind, only capture vague impressions of the primitive impulses that motivated it. He didn’t need any deeper communion than that. He had something better.

He had control.

A dragon rider could only appeal and request the obedience of his steed. There were no better examples of that than the desertion of the drakes during the Siege of Barak Varr and their later retreat from Tor Alessi. The old ways of Caledor Dragontamer left the beasts wilful and independent. It didn’t impress upon them their place as servants of the asur.

Ilendril had found magic that would change all that. His ancestors had been cast out of Caledor for seeking such secrets. Now, he had them in his possession. He would prove to all Ulthuan that they were meant to control them and to command the dragons – not as supplicants but as masters.

First he would prove it with the wyrms of Elthin Arvan. Then, when he had the attention of the Phoenix King himself, he would show that the drakes of Ulthuan could be commanded in the same way.

Ilendril wondered what price in fortune and glory could be placed upon a secret that would bring not just an end to the War of the Beard, but give to the asur the keys to conquering the world.

It was a ponderous question, and one Ilendril gave great thought to as he commanded his wyrm to fly him back to Athel Toralien. There was much to do, and the first step was demonstrating for Lady Kelsei the new weapon he had to offer her armies.

Solemnly, Morek Furrowbrow watched as his master, Ranuld Silverthumb, was removed from the chair in which he’d died. It took ten dwarfs with a winch to move the ancient runelord. By some hideous process Morek couldn’t begin to understand, his mentor had been petrified. A basilisk’s stare couldn’t have wrought a more complete petrifaction. Upon discovering Ranuld’s body, Morek had given his hand an exploratory tap of his hammer. One of the fingers, extended as though pointing, broke away. From skin to flesh to veins and bone, everything within the finger was still distinct, but it had become solid stone.

Morek looked about the vault-like forge where his master had died. The Anvils of Doom, those precious artefacts of the ancient past, stood upon their pedestals. It was when returning one of the Anvils to its place that Ranuld’s body had been discovered. The High Runelord of Karaz-a-Karak hadn’t been seen in decades, but that wasn’t unusual in itself. Ranuld had been given to long ruminations in private and lengthy sojourns into the forgotten reaches of the Karaz Ankor. His absence was noted among the other runelords and runesmiths, but it hadn’t been considered a cause for alarm.

They might never know how long Ranuld had been sitting there in the dark, as lifeless as the hulking gronti-duraz who crouched in the semi-darkness of the vault. What strange process had struck down the High Runelord was of more pressing consequence to Morek. Already there were whispers of elgi sorcery, but he was reluctant to entertain such an easy explanation. If the elgi could dispatch such murderous sendings then how was it that they’d neglected to strike down High King Gotrek or Morgrim or King Varnuf or any of the other great warlords of the dawi?

A chill crept down Morek’s spine as he considered other possibilities. Watching the apprentice runesmiths loading Ranuld’s statue-like corpse onto a cart, there was no denying the unnatural condition of the body. Some sort of magic had brought the High Runelord to ruin. There were strange, unnatural creatures, it was true, that killed by changing their prey to stone. But if a basilisk or cockatrice had somehow snuck into the halls of Karaz-a-Karak, the brute would hardly have stopped with a single victim. It would have killed again and again to fill its belly, continuing to prey on dawi until it was hunted down and destroyed.

No, there was something more than a simple beast behind Ranuld’s death. Morek scratched at his beard, wondering if he dared to draw a connection between his master’s strange death and something else that had been nagging at him for some time.

The thane Drogor. Morek had only seen him a few times since his return from Barak Varr. Indeed, it struck the runelord that the thane went out of his way to keep clear of Morek and any other runesmith. He was reminded of the same furtive air when Drogor had first arrived at Karaz-a-Karak and become the friend and confidant of Prince Snorri. Despite his many years with Snorri, Drogor had managed to always be absent whenever Morek called upon the prince.

Now he was back, this time as one of Morgrim’s closest companions. It could be simple political expediency on Drogor’s part, of course, currying favour with those in power. After all, Snorri had raised him from a nameless adventurer from Karak Zorn to a thane of Karaz-a-Karak. Perhaps Drogor simply sought further advancement by renewing his friendship with Morgrim.

If he could be certain it was so simple a matter as shameless opportunism, Morek would actually be relieved. Such tawdry politicking would be wholesome beside the things he feared.

Maybe it was being so near to Ranuld and recalling his master’s frequent talk of ‘old magic’ that set Morek’s mind to thinking about the ancient past. Enemies that were as old as the magic Ranuld had sought to restore. Enemies terrible and malignant beyond the worst outrages of elgi and urk. The old enemies. The eternal enemies.

The undying enemies.

Morek stared about the darkened vault, studying the massive rune forge and the great war-shield lying against the wall. One of the dokbar, the fabulously ancient ‘windows of seeing’ that the runelords of yore had used to commune with their fellows. Ranuld had been one of the few who still knew the secret to evoking the dokbar’s rune magic and sending his voice and image to the other dokbars. It was an example of the old magic, just as the gronti-duraz were. Relics of an art that was being lost to the dawi.

As the old magic faded, Morek wondered if the things it had once held at bay might be creeping back into the world. Things endowed with magic of their own. Things with intelligence beyond that of beast and urk. Things that might hide themselves in shapes that weren’t their own.

Morek looked at the empty throne. How he wished he could discuss his suspicions with his master. Would the High Runelord dismiss them as baseless or would he find them worthy of concern? And if they were worthy of concern, what would he advise Morek to do?

Morek looked to the slumbering gronti-duraz and shook his head. There were no answers for him here, only the secrets of the dead.

‘You should appreciate the abomination of what Lord Ilendril is seeking to accomplish.’ Liandra was in such a temper that she refused to stay in her seat. Instead she prowled like a lioness through the parlour, her boots clattering as they moved from rug to tile and back again.

Thoriol leaned back in his chair overlooking the window and shook his head. ‘I should, but I fear that I can’t,’ he said.

Liandra rounded on him. ‘Your father was the Master of Dragons. He knew them better than any asur alive. He would know at once the horror of this thing.’ She balled her hands into fists. ‘I suspected… I knew from the first that Ilendril was going to try something like this. The moment I saw him call a merwyrm from the sea, I knew this was what he intended. This was why the dragons left Barak Varr. This is why they returned to Ulthuan.’

‘If they hadn’t left us,’ Thoriol said, ‘then no one would be listening to Ilendril. He wouldn’t have Lady Kelsei’s ear.’

‘You are excusing this?’ Liandra couldn’t keep the disgust from her tone.

‘I’m not excusing anything or anyone,’ Thoriol told her. ‘What I am trying to do is explain why…’

‘Do you know that is what the druchii do?’ Liandra snarled back. ‘I have seen it. They take a dragon and they break him. They torture and mutilate until all that is left is a twisted, tormented thing, and then they force that abomination to their will. Ilendril is no better than a druchii to even suggest we do the same. But he’s gone far beyond merely suggesting. He’s done it. He wants to prove it to–’

‘The dragons have left Tor Alessi,’ Thoriol reminded her. ‘They have left us on our own. Do you understand the panic that has left the people in? They live in dread of the day the dwarfs return to lay siege to the city and there are no dragons to stop them. The people in Sith Rionnasc and Athel Toralien and all the other settlements, they know if they are attacked there will be no dragons flying to their rescue. The people are frightened, and frightened people will grasp at anything and anyone who offers an end to their fear.’

‘The mages can conjure phantasms to deceive the dwarfs,’ Liandra said.

‘How long do you think illusions will be enough to hold them back?’ Thoriol asked. ‘I was here when they marched on Tor Alessi. I saw them marching out against real dragons, marching out even as whole regiments were reduced to ash. No, the dwarfs are too stubborn to meekly turn tail. Once they are committed, they have to be decimated before they will relent. Against that kind of determination, illusions are not enough.’

‘Then you are saying we should embrace this?’ Liandra cried.

Thoriol caught something in Liandra’s eye as she raged about the despicable magics Ilendril had harnessed. It was only there for an instant, but he saw it just the same. It was a look of guilt and shame. He remembered that Liandra wasn’t simply a dragon rider; she was a dragon rider without a dragon.

‘What worries you more?’ Thoriol asked. ‘That we will embrace this new magic or that you will embrace it?’

Liandra turned on him, her face so filled with outrage that he thought she would come at him with her fists. Then the rage collapsed, sinking beneath the weight of self-loathing. She turned from him, shaking her head.

‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ she said. ‘You can’t imagine the temptation to have that again. To soar above the clouds, to feel the awesome might of a dragon beneath you. That is being alive – everything else is just shadows and echoes. To share your heart and mind with something older than the mountains and the seas… There is nothing else to compare.’ She looked back at Thoriol, her body trembling with the violence of the emotion that gripped her. ‘I yearn for that, to reclaim it for myself. That is what Ilendril dangles before me, the promise that I could be again what I once was.’

Liandra’s eyes hardened. ‘But it is all a lie. What he promises isn’t communion but enslavement. It isn’t sharing the power of a dragon but dominating it, commanding it like a huntsman commands his dog. It’s a violation of the ancient pacts between asur and dragon, an abandonment of the grace and glory that is the heritage of Caledor Dragontamer. It is… immoral.’

Thoriol nodded slowly. He could appreciate the temptation that drove Liandra’s disgust, but she had to understand that it wasn’t simply a question of morality, of right and wrong. The war made it so much more than that. ‘Without dragons to protect them, many asur will suffer,’ he said. ‘We can argue all night about whether the colonies should be abandoned or if the king should offer the dwarfs peace on their terms, but the reality is that our people are here now. If they aren’t protected, a lot of them are going to die.’

Liandra scowled. ‘If we abandon principle, if we forsake the ideals that make us who we are, then what is it that we’re fighting for?’

‘It is the wyrms of Elthin Arvan that Ilendril proposes to harness,’ Thoriol said, trying to soothe her. ‘The dragons of this land have no compact with the asur.’

‘Do you really think it will stop here?’ Liandra challenged. ‘Can you really believe Ilendril’s ambitions are so small? Do you think the king won’t be watching?’ She pointed to the window, out to the bay where Draukhain’s island stood. ‘How long before it is the drakes of Ulthuan that Ilendril’s supporters decide to harness? Why should the asur ask when they can take?’

The question gave Thoriol pause. Not for the first time he wished Caradryel were with him. The diplomat was far more versed in politics than he was, far more capable of seeing the implications of something like this. Even after all his years at his uncle’s court, Thoriol still considered himself a novice when it came to intrigue and deception.

‘How would you stop it now?’ Thoriol asked. ‘Even if you wanted to, how would you stop it? He already has the attention of Lady Kelsei and the Council of Five. You already know the king’s attitude when it comes to dragons. What would stop him?’

Liandra came closer to where Thoriol was seated. She lowered her voice, not from fear that there were spies within the Tower of the Dragon but out of deference to the unsavoury suspicions her words would convey. ‘I have told you already that this magic of Ilendril’s seems similar to the sorcery which commanded the black dragon that destroyed Kor Vanaeth. If any evidence of such a connection could be found and presented to the loremasters in Hoeth…’

‘Even my uncle would be forced to condemn it as black magic,’ Thoriol said.

‘Lord Teranion shares my concerns,’ Liandra continued. ‘We have both had our agents watching Ilendril’s movements. Sooner or later we will discover the source of this monstrous magic of his.’

‘And when you do?’ Thoriol wondered.

Liandra’s eyes were as cold as a glacier. ‘When we do, we will expose him.’ She turned her eyes back to the window, staring out into the harbour. ‘I only pray that when we do, it isn’t already too late.’

Kazad Kro squatted upon its hill like some great stone snake. Its massive walls and parapets had been extended over time, coiling round and round until there was no visible trace of the rock upon which they stood. It was the last stronghold of the skarrenawi, the last bastion of a lost people. For centuries the hill dwarfs had toiled, ceaselessly hauling stone to their fortress, expanding its defences, trying to build a barrier strong and mighty enough to keep out the rest of the world. For centuries, it seemed, their strategy had worked. The war raging through the Old World had passed them by, washing around Kazad Kro as though it were a great boulder lying in the midst of a river of blood. Kazad Kro had been forgotten by elgi and dawi alike.

Or so those who had buried themselves behind its walls desperately hoped. After the destruction of Kazad Thar and Kazad Mingol, a great exodus of the skarrenawi had taken place. Led by Rundin Torbansonn, they had renounced their loyalties to High King Skarnag Grum and returned to the mountains and their dawi cousins. Only those too proud and too stubborn to accept the doom of their people remained behind, clinging to their gold-mad king.

Such was Kazad Kro, its once grand halls and bustling markets reduced to a squalor of misery and poverty. The hold was filled to bursting with the remains of the skarrenawi, refugees from across the lands who had once owed fealty to Skarnag Grum. The war, which had bypassed the city, had been more attentive to the surrounding lands. The armies of elf and dwarf alike had trampled the fields and pastures that once supported Kazad Kro. The dawi saw no shame in taking the food of their isolated cousins to feed their own warriors, for the skarrenawi would benefit once the elgi were driven back into the sea. The elgi, by turn, appreciated that anything which gave their enemies support must be destroyed and the fields of Kazad Kro had been razed, great rocks called down from the skies to spoil them and salt sown across what remained. Without crops and herds, the dwarfs within the hold had been reduced to subsisting entirely on the mushrooms they could grow down in their vaults and deeps. The cheese and milk from the few goats kept inside the walls became a precious treasure, and any dwarf who dared strike a goat was summarily and brutally executed by his kindred.

Through it all, through all the squalid despair, High King Skarnag Grum kept himself to his treasure vault, tirelessly counting the gold he had hoarded during better times. His mind retreated back into the days of peace and prosperity, when the wealth of both dwarf and elf flowed through the forts and outposts of the skarrenawi. Sometimes, in the grip of his nostalgic madness, he would order his goldmasters to raise the tax on trade goods or increase the duties on wine and beer. Often he would demand to know why the inhabitants of some settlement burned to ash decades prior had failed to fulfil their monetary obligations to the High King. When such fits came upon Skarnag Grum, his goldmasters shook their heads and made their excuses, none of them willing to break the king’s delusions with the terrible reality around them.

And so it sat, forsaken and forlorn – Kazad Kro, the lone citadel of the skarrenawi. Untouched by siege, unblemished by the havoc of attacking armies, the hold endured like its people, stubborn and defiant.

In looking for a site to display the power now at his command, Lord Ilendril could have asked for no better place.

In the chronicles of the asur, the day would be recorded as the Battle of Ilendril’s Hill.

In the dwarfs’ Great Book of Grudges, it would be known as the Massacre of Malok.

The wyrm circled above the dwarf fortress, its primordial roar smashing down upon Kazad Kro like a thunderclap. Smoke billowed from the dragon’s maw, little flashes of flame flickering from between its monstrous fangs. Each beat of the beast’s mighty wings sent its reptilian reek rushing into the halls of the skarrenawi.

Again and again the great red dragon soared over the hill fort. The ballistae and rock throwers mounted in Kazad Kro’s towers hurled their missiles at the beast, but always the dragon was too high to be within their reach. The bellowing roar deepened into a serpentine hiss, a cachinnation rife with malignant mockery. It was the cruel laughter of a monster confident in its power and in the helplessness of its prey.

Through the refugee-packed halls of Kazad Kro, terror flourished. The skarrenawi were just as capable of stubborn valour as their mountain cousins, but there was a difference between taking a stand against an enemy who could be fought, who at least promised a noble death in battle, and trying to oppose something elemental and ancient. Too many of the dwarfs packed into Kazad Kro had been there to see Kazad Thar razed, to watch the destruction visited upon Kazad Mingol before the conflagration. They knew what a dragon of such size and awful power could do. They had survived it once, and to go through such an experience again cracked such courage as they still possessed.

A riot of fear swept through the fort. Refugees seeking to force their way through the gates, soldiers trying just as forcefully to keep them barred against the enemy. The shrieks of desperate rinns, the wailing of children, the fretful mutterings of elders as they pulled at their beards. Above it all, the loathsome hiss and roar of the dragon, persistent and inescapable.

Then, with the same suddenness with which the monster had appeared over Kazad Kro, the dragon was gone. Lookouts in the towers shouted the news down the passageways, and from there the word was carried into the halls and corridors. The fear and strife of only minutes before dissolved into jubilant laughter and cheers. Prayers of gratitude to Valaya and Grungni rang out. The dragon was gone! The wyrm had fled!

Immediately speculation ran rampant. Rumour quickly established that a dawi army had appeared and driven off the monster. The dragon had retreated when it caught the scent of Morgrim Elgidum, for the great hero of the dawi was prophesied to be a drengudrakk and the wyrm didn’t want to be the one from which he earned the title of ‘dragon slayer’. Then, too, some spoke of Rundin Torbansonn, the exiled hero of the skarrenawi, a dwarf who had already slain a dragon. It was Rundin, naked to the waist and with his head shaved, who the dragon had seen, and in seeing had flown off to find easier prey.

The laughter, the cheers, the rumours and the prayers lasted nearly an hour. That was when the lookouts in the towers blew the great alarm horns, alerting all within Kazad Kro.

The dragon was back.

The wyrm came sweeping down upon the fort in a fierce dive. Its claws were wrapped around a great rock it had ripped from the side of some mountain. As it dived upon Kazad Kro, it released the enormous boulder. Tonnes of rock went hurtling down into the hold’s gates, its great velocity and momentum driving it into the iron-banded portals with the ferocity of a volcano. The gates were obliterated by the impact, smashing inwards in a blast of splintered wood and shattered stone. Hundreds of dwarfs, both the soldiers guarding the gate and the refugees who had sought to escape the hold, were pulverised by flying debris. Hundreds more were crushed as the mountain boulder went careening through the halls, grinding dwarfs beneath as though they were grain under a millstone.

Overhead, the dragon reared up, a malefic roar erupting from its fanged maw. A few bolts were flung at it by those skarrenawi still able to answer the beast’s rampage, but their aim was too shaky to seriously threaten the reptile. The wyrm’s ophidian eyes glared at the most persistent bolt throwers. Uttering a savage hiss, the beast swept down upon their tower.

The dragon crashed into the side of the building, the impact rattling the fortification with the fury of an earthquake. Powerful claws dug into the face of the tower. Like some titanic lizard, the dragon began to pull itself up the side of the fort. At each window and embrasure, the wyrm paused to send a blast of fiery death licking into the room beyond, immolating any dwarf too slow to throw himself down the stairwell.

A few of those dwarfs saw the purple-cloaked rider seated in a golden saddle strapped to the wyrm’s back. They noted the callous, imperious cast of the elf lord’s face, the tall helm with its sculpted wings and the pearl-fangs that mocked the jaws of the beast he rode. Some few who understood the words of Eltharin and who heard Ilendril’s voice, recalled with rage the elgi’s vile commands.

‘Burn them,’ Ilendril snarled. ‘Burn the moles in their burrows!’

The dragon obeyed with a spiteful pleasure. Enslaved by the puny creature on its back, the wyrm vented its frustration and rage against the puny creatures before its jaws. The screams of those it scorched, the shrieks of those it crushed, the moans of those it mutilated, these were a salve to its own misery.

When the tower had been reduced to a burned-out cromlech, the dragon threw itself back, tearing a great chunk of the wall away as it ripped its claws free. For an instant, the mighty beast hurtled earthwards, then its immense wings snapped open. With a grace incredible for a creature so massive, the dragon soared away from the smoking tower. Bolts and rocks shot out at it, but it ducked beneath their cast. The dwarf artillerists thought to bring down a fleeing adversary. It was an error from which they wouldn’t recover. They thought the monster’s outrages were at an end, but they were woefully mistaken.

The carnage had only begun.

Hissing like new-forged steel, the dragon swept towards the smashed gates. Folding its wings as it dived down, it propelled its immense body through the battered defences and into the great hall beyond. Slamming its mighty claws into the granite floor, the wyrm arrested its momentum, bringing itself to a stop just beyond the gate.

For an instant the dragon simply stood there, surrounded by the havoc wrought by the rock it had loosed against the hold, the blood of massacred dwarfs pooling about its feet. The wyrm’s nostrils flared and its heart pounded with the intoxicating scent. It wasn’t hunger, but something even more primal. It was power, the raw expression of naked, merciless force.

Throwing back its head, the dragon roared, its deafening bellow knocking stones from the damaged ceiling and walls, driving stunned survivors from hiding to flee in mindless terror before it. The wyrm lashed its tail against a nearby pillar, shattering the visage of an ancestor god and sending the entire column crashing down. A cloud of dust rolled across the exultant reptile.

A phalanx of dwarf warriors came marching into the great hall, ponderous door-like shields raised to defend themselves against the wyrm’s fire. Crossbowmen hidden behind the advancing warriors loosed their bolts at the beast, groaning in despair when they saw the missiles bounce harmlessly from the monster’s crimson scales.

The dragon unleashed a blast of fire at the oncoming warriors. The runes etched into their shields protected the dwarfs from the flames, flaring into brilliance as their protective magic was evoked. But if the fire couldn’t hurt the warriors, it could block their vision. It could stifle their advance.

The dwarfs resumed their grim march the instant the fires cleared. Then they saw that the dragon wasn’t waiting to meet their axes and spears. During those seconds of blindness, the dragon had reared up, sinking its claws into the already crumbling roof. With a murderous shriek, the wyrm gouged out a great wound in the ceiling and brought the floor above crashing down onto the dwarfs below.

Up through the rubble and debris, the dragon clawed its way into the upper deeps of Kazad Kro. The opulent halls of the guilds and nobles, the richly appointed chambers of the goldmasters, the vast temples of the ancestor gods. One after another they suffered the wyrm’s malice. Dragon fire scored the marble walls and pitted granite columns. Those dwarfs of the upper halls, whether they chose to fight or flee, were slaughtered by the wyrm.

Through it all, Lord Ilendril savoured the destruction. Long, so long, had he lusted for this might. The legacy he had wanted so desperately for himself was his now. He hadn’t bowed to the fickle hearts of reptilian beasts. He hadn’t let his dreams be murdered by the cruel hand of fate. He’d reached out and seized what he wanted from life, claimed what should always have been his. The awesome might of a dragon to command and control. Let the dragon riders of Caledor cling to their foolish traditions of dragonsong and communion. He was a truer master of dragons than any of them.

Searing pain ripped through Ilendril. The fang hanging from around his neck felt as though it were on fire. Blood oozed from his charred cheek and he could feel his skin bubbling and blistering. Beneath him, through him, he could feel the agonies of the dragon.

Looking around, Ilendril saw a lone grey-bearded dwarf raise his strange metal staff and send another blast of lightning searing into his slave’s scaly hide. Through the sympathetic pain that stabbed into him, he recognised his enemy as one of the mud-mages of the grubby little dwarf culture. When the runelord moved to assault the dragon again, Ilendril compelled the wyrm to fight past the pain that wracked them. The agony of the rune-lightning was nothing beside the mental daggers the elf sent stabbing into the reptile’s brain.

With a howl of agony, the dragon whipped its tail around, catching the runelord and flinging him far across the shattered temple in which they fought. The grey-bearded dwarf slammed into one of the walls, even his rune-etched armour unable to keep every bone in his venerable body from breaking. The runelord crashed to the floor in a jumble of shattered flesh.

Ilendril daubed at his bleeding face with a silken cloth. He wasn’t enjoying himself as much as he had only a few moments ago. The magnificent power of his dragon had made him oblivious to his own vulnerability. To die, now, when he was so close to securing his place in the annals of the asur, would be ignominious. Even now, Lady Kelsei and her entourage were watching his progress through the scrying crystals of Tor Alessi’s mages. He had so many more important things to think about than simply allowing the dragon to run amok.

Even so, there was still one further thing the dragon needed to do. One act that would impress upon the watching mages that the destruction of Kazad Kro was total and complete.

Exerting his will, Ilendril forced the wyrm to claw its way to the very heart of the fort. There was no toying with the dwarfs now. Every passage connecting to the main hall was brought down by a sweep of the wyrm’s tail or collapsed by its powerful claws. Fire turned every warrior who stood before him into a blazing ember.

After more than an hour of slaughter, the dragon reached the core of Kazad Kro. Three dwarfs stood before a great door fashioned from gold. They screamed as the wyrm caught them in its jaws and wolfed them down in great gulping bites. Then the dragon turned to the door again. A heave of its tremendous bulk brought the door and the wall in which it was set crashing inwards.

The treasure hall of Kazad Kor was a testament to the greed and avarice of Skarnag Grum, High King of the skarrenawi. While his domains withered and died, while war raged all around him, Skarnag Grum had withdrawn into his vault, lurking amongst his hoarded gold. Tonnes of it lay piled about the floor, heaped in stacks of ingots and coins, gathered in jumbles of nuggets and mounds of dust. Even now, with the great dragon glaring at him through the ruined wall, the hill dwarf king clung to his gold. Crouching among his coins, he wrapped his arms about the closest stacks, drawing them to him as though he could protect it with his mere presence. A stream of Khazalid obscenities flew from the crazed king’s foam-flecked lips.

The dragon glared at the mad, pathetic dwarf for a moment. Then it reared back and unleashed a great gout of flame. The gold heaped about Skarnag Grum melted in the fury of the dragon fire. A wave of molten metal washed over the cursing king, transforming him in an instant into an unrecognisable lump of gold, a precious nugget with a rotten core of burned flesh and scorched bone.

Ilendril stared at the vanquished king and a cruel smile spread across his face. None would contest his power now. He had done more than just give battle to the dwarfs; he had slaughtered one of their kings within his own hall. Let his detractors try to deny his power now.

As he ordered his wyrm out from the crumbling halls of Kazad Kro and back into the open sky, Ilendril’s smile might have faltered if he could have read his steed’s mind the way those truly attuned to a dragon could. He might have sensed then the lesson the reptile had learned during the massacre: that when the wyrm was hurt, its rider suffered too.

And when the rider suffered, his control over the dragon wavered.

In his pride, Ilendril had named his steed Ilendrakk – ‘Ilendril’s Dragon’. But soon, even the asur would begin to call the wyrm by the name the dwarfs gave it.

Malok, a Khazalid word meaning ‘malice’.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dirge for Athel Toralien
445th year of the reign of Caledor II

‘Khazuk! Khazuk!’

Even out on the bay, the sound of the dwarfish war-cry sent a thrill of fear rushing through Thoriol’s blood. His mind retreated back through the centuries to that day when he’d stood on the walls with Baelian’s archers against the besieging hordes of Morgrim Elfdoom. It was a sight that was as clear in his memory as though it were yesterday. Every sound, every smell, every touch of that day was imprinted upon his very soul.

It wasn’t so easy to forget the day when you should have died.

Tor Alessi had been attacked many times over the intervening years, but never again with such force. The other attacks had been petty, vindictive acts of reprisal staged by individual kings. None of them had mustered the kind of throng that Morgrim had.

Until now. Earlier that day Thoriol had watched from the Tower of the Dragon as the dwarfs again came against Tor Alessi. With the help of a scrying crystal left to him by Lady Liandra, he’d watched the enemy as they advanced. The army outside the walls this time was no rabble drawn from a single hold but a great host of tens of thousands, assembled by none less than High King Gotrek himself. From the walls, the dwarfs could be seen gathering beneath the shelter of the trees.

The High King had marched out on his own, borne aloft upon his Throne of Power by a bodyguard of thanes, their heavy armour gilded and inscribed with runes, their horned helms cast in the semblance of angry ancestors and scowling gods. The king’s armour was no less ornate, its dark plates of gromril bound together with links of gleaming gold, mighty runes picked out in lines of diamond and ruby. His long white beard was tucked into a broad belt with an enormous buckle fashioned from a single piece of emerald, each lock of his beard festooned with a line of onyx beads. He was broad of build and shoulder, his arms massive knots of muscle that strained the jewelled torcs wrapped about them. In his hands, he hefted an axe that might have been too big for an ogre to carry. Upon the dwarf king’s face was etched an expression of such hatred that even the most prideful of the asur felt an icy tingle of fear along their spines.

The High King’s royal procession had stopped a short way onto the field between the walls and trees. Gotrek’s voice had barked out, carrying like thunder to the asur behind their fortifications. His words were Khazalid, but there were enough in the city familiar with the tongue to soon translate it. They were words the elves had heard many times before.

‘Leave now or remain forever in your graves.’

Not a threat, rather a terrible promise of the destruction the dwarfs would loose against the city.

The dread memory of Morgrim’s siege, the knowledge that Gotrek’s army would be even bigger than that of his nephew, spurred Lady Kelsei to call upon Lord Ilendril’s powers. The once dishonoured and exiled highborn was only too happy to oblige the general. Since the destruction of Kazad Kro, Ilendril had managed to enslave three more wyrms by means of his sorcerous methods. The dragons had been posted all around the colonies, taking the place of the absent dragon riders of Caledor. Now the reptiles were hastily summoned back to Tor Alessi to defend the city in its hour of need.

Fear and despair were driving the asur to embrace powers they had once shunned, to countenance things they’d once deemed utterly immoral. To save Tor Alessi, the asur were ready to blacken their souls.

Thoriol listened to the harsh, guttural war-cry booming out from the besieging army. They were working themselves into a frenzy. For days the dwarfs had taken shelter in their tunnels beneath the trees, safe from the attentions of Ilendril’s prowling wyrms. How many more dawi had marched to join the attack it was impossible to say with any real accuracy. Even the mages were unable to pierce the veil of the forest, their magics cast aside by some elder enchantment that hung over the woods like an aethyric fog. There could be a hundred thousand dwarfs under the forest waiting for Gotrek’s command to attack.

Desperate moments forced people to desperate measures. Thoriol was never more aware of that truth than the moment he climbed down into a fishing smack and started rowing out to Draukhain’s island.

What was he, after all, but the disappointment of Tor Caled? He wasn’t the Master of Dragons his father had been. He wasn’t the warrior his uncle was. He wasn’t wise like his mother. He wasn’t even a shrewd politician like Caradryel. He was nothing and he had nothing to offer.

But he could. An awful thought had driven Thoriol across the bay. Draukhain was often absent from its island. If the drake was gone, he would be free to search among the rocks and dwarfish carrion strewn about the isle. All he needed was a broken tooth or a sliver of claw, maybe just a lost scale or chip of horn. He could take what he found back to Ilendril, have him use his magic to make a talisman. Draukhain would be his to command, to bring into the battle against High King Gotrek and his horde.

Thoriol fairly leapt from the boat as soon as he brought it close to the shore of Draukhain’s island. He scrambled up the rocks, his hand tight around the hilt of his sword. The sword his father had given him. The sword of a dragon rider.

He would be a dragon rider. He would seize the legacy of his blood, become the great warrior his father had always wanted him to be. He would prove himself a true son of Tor Caled. He wouldn’t suffer the whims of beasts to keep him from his destiny.

Through most of the day, Thoriol scoured the island, picking among the charred dead for what he needed. The grisly wreckage of scorched armour and blackened bones was all around him, a seemingly limitless chronicle of carnage and destruction. The first corpse he drew from the piles was fresh enough that some meat yet clung to the bones, sloughing away beneath his touch as he tried to drag the body off. Fighting down his revulsion, Thoriol inspected the mangled dwarf, checking the armour for any rent or tear, studying the decayed corpse for any wound. All that rewarded his attentions were a few sea-worms and a scavenging crab that scuttled out from between the dwarf’s exposed ribs.

Crushing his feelings of disgust and nausea, Thoriol pressed on with his search. One body, then two, then three. Again and again he inspected the morbid trophies, the ghoulish hoard the dragon had gathered for itself. A dozen, then two dozen, each body as unrewarding as the last. One by one he shoved them away, hefting them over the rocky shore to sink into the bay. Dozens became scores and still the prince continued his search, roving with eyes and hands across the rotten wastes. Some of the bodies sported golden rings and jewelled necklaces, torcs and belts studded with precious gems, yet it was not for such mundane treasure that the prince hunted. In frustrated despair, he hurled the valuables out into the water. What he had to find continued to elude him as the scores of bodies stretched into a hundred and more. Still the prince wouldn’t relent. What was at stake was too enormous to relinquish. The sounds of battle rising from outside Tor Alessi faded away, the cold bite of the sea breeze ceased to sting his skin, the stink of the dead no longer churned his stomach. Nothing mattered now, except the search and the prize.

When he was just beginning to lose hope, when he was just considering abandoning the search and returning to the embattled city, the prince’s hand fell upon the very thing he’d been seeking. There, embedded in the breastplate of what had once been a dwarf noble, was a cracked dragon tooth. Planting his foot on the blackened armour, Thoriol worked the fang back and forth, gradually freeing it from the torn metal. He held the fang up before his face, studying it with covetous eyes. Soon he would be there, sailing the clouds on the back of a mighty wyrm, the primordial power of a dragon his to command.

Thoriol turned and looked back at Tor Alessi. He was a hero to them already. Defying the king’s orders to return to Ulthuan had enhanced his reputation still further, but he didn’t think a simple act of defiance was enough to claim the legacy left by his father. He needed to earn the adoration of Tor Alessi. With the fang he held and the dragon it could command, he would have the power to earn that acclaim.

In his life Thoriol had been forced to make many hard choices, but never one so excruciating as that he had now made. In his mind he could imagine the roar of the wind as he flew through the skies. He could feel the vibrations of power pulsing through his bones, the thunder of the dragon’s heart throbbing through his own veins. His ears were filled with the rush of mighty wings, the crackle of searing flames. He could feel the harmonies of the dragonsong, not a lonely unrelieved appeal, but a dream fulfilled, a purpose at last achieved. He could picture the adoring crowds, cheering his valour and his might, crying out their adoration for the prince who had come into his possession, the elf who had claimed the birthright of his blood. Thoriol, the Master of Dragons!

Tears in his eyes, the prince threw the fang out into the bay and watched it plummet to the bottom. Even to save Tor Alessi he couldn’t accept a path that defiled Imladrik’s legacy and betrayed the ancient alliance between dragon and elf. That was the way of the druchii and if the asur behaved no better than their sundered kin, then they deserved to perish.

Resolved to his purpose, Thoriol turned and started hunting among the dead for anything else Draukhain had discarded. Sooner or later, someone else would think to force the dragon to fight for Tor Alessi and help break the siege. He was determined to remove that possibility.

A strange sound struck Thoriol as he resumed his search. It was a weird, slopping noise, wet and rasping at the same time. He could feel a shiver pass through the rocks under his feet and a few of the helms and shields he’d taken from the corpses and piled into little stacks were set to quivering and rattling.

You do honour to your father.

Thoriol froze, reeling as a deep voice burned itself into his brain. He slumped down atop the charred armour of a dwarf lord, clapping his hands to his head. Again the voice hissed across his mind.

We share the dragonsong of Imladrik. It is the heritage he has left you.

As the prince raised his face he saw the enormous bulk of Draukhain crawling up from the water just beyond the obelisk for Oeragor. The drake’s sapphire scales shone with a silky newness, as though the reptile had just shed its skin. The eyes of the dragon studied the forlorn elf.

This is why none of my kind would bear you. They could smell your fate.

With each thought the dragon projected into his mind, the pain lessened. Thoriol briefly wondered if this was how his father had communed with Draukhain. Was there a way to make the drake understand his own thoughts? If there was, it was an art lost to Thoriol.

‘Too many of my people don’t understand,’ Thoriol cried out to Draukhain. ‘To save themselves they would enslave what they can’t control.’

That has ever been the weakness of your fragile folk. They are too delicate to exist among the elements, so they seek to reshape them. They pull down the mountain to make walls and gates and towers. They cut down the forest to plant orchards and groves. They build a ship so they can contend against the sea.

‘Now there are some who would do the same to dragonkind,’ Thoriol warned.

Already there are those who have tried.

Thoriol felt the impulse to turn his eyes from the gigantic reptile, looking into the rocks past him. A shudder ran through him as he recognised the ornate armour of Lord Teranion and the high silvered helm of Vithrein lying among the piles of dwarfish dead. He knew at once what must have happened. Instead of exposing the secret of Ilendril’s magic, Teranion had instead succumbed to it. The temptation to possess the glories of a dragon rider was too great for him to resist and in the end he had submitted to whatever promises Vithrein made to him.

Strangely, Thoriol felt no sympathy for the dead asur. They had embraced their own deaths when they came to this island and tried to enslave Draukhain. He looked back at the dragon. ‘Why did you not kill me? I might have come here to do what they failed to do.’

You are the son of Imladrik.

It was the only explanation the drake would give him, but somehow Thoriol understood. He could feel the bond between them, something more powerful than anything he’d ever known. He felt he was a part of Draukhain and knew that the dragon felt the same. All the doubt and emptiness of his life, the feelings of purposelessness and want… they were gone now. He knew that this was what he’d been waiting for, the role he’d been biding his time to take upon himself.

Slowly, the prince felt himself compelled towards the dragon. He felt an almost primal terror rush through his veins. The image of a bird hypnotised by the glare of a snake rose unbidden, making his heart quake within his breast. His every instinct railed against what he was doing, yet that part of his mind that had ever refused to abandon his father’s dream fought back, rebelling with the knowledge that here at last he had found his destiny.

Afraid or elated, Thoriol knew he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the dragon’s. He could no more defy that reptilian gaze than he could demand the sun to freeze itself in the sky. Closer and closer he came until at last he reached out with his hand and pressed his palm against Draukhain’s forehead. The reptile’s scales were cold and damp from the sea, seeming to leach the warmth from his touch. At the same time, he could feel the incredible heat burning deep within the drake, the elemental flame that fuelled its fire.

A deep, rolling hiss rasped across Draukhain’s fangs. The dragon closed its eyes and its immense body trembled for an instant. Thoriol shivered at the same time, feeling his own heartbeat slow as that of the dragon sped up, each of their bodies struggling to find sympathy with the other. Soon Thoriol could feel the beast’s mind coiling around his own, wrapping him in a somehow protective embrace.

‘The dawi march against Tor Alessi,’ Thoriol told Draukhain. ‘Will you defend the city?’

No. The dragon’s thoughts swirled through Thoriol’s mind. The city has no interest for me. What I will do is kill dwarfs, make them suffer for what they have done. Make them remember the might of your father. That is what I would share with you, Thoriol of Tor Caled. The tide of vengeance is great enough to bear us both. Together, we will teach the dwarfs what it is to fear.

Thoriol trembled at the awfulness of the dragon’s passion. It was like listening to a thunderstorm explaining its rage or a volcano expressing its hate. It was both terrible and wrong that such elemental power should be so focused and purposeful. And at the same time, he couldn’t deny the call of that same power. He knew how Teranion had been tempted, because he felt that same lust pounding through his own veins. The dragonsong was something shared between drake and elf, but never before had Thoriol considered that the call could be issued by the dragon as easily as it could by the asur.

Be the dragon, become the dragon.

Draukhain lashed its mighty tail, toppling the obelisk. Beneath the stone, entombed in a shallow pit, were the gilded saddle and harness the dragon had once worn to bear Imladrik across the world.

Together, Draukhain’s mind-voice slithered through Thoriol’s brain. As the prince climbed down to retrieve the saddle, he tried to tell himself he did so to save the city, to protect the people of Tor Alessi. In his heart, however, he already knew that was a lie. He would punish the dwarfs for taking his father away. For now, that was all that mattered. Later, later he could think about what it meant to be a dragon rider and to wield such power.

As he lifted the saddle from its hole, Thoriol looked again to the shattered armour of Lord Teranion. He wondered if Liandra’s hunt had ended the same way, if her remains too were lying somewhere on the island.

If she had fallen in the end to the daemons of her soul.

The dwarf lords stood within the mouth of the old mine-working, wrapped in the shadows of their refuge. Far below them, beneath the great cliffs, the elven city stretched away towards the sea.

‘The dragon hasn’t returned, my lord.’ Drogor lowered the spyglass from his eye and bowed to the dwarf beside him. Morgrim was silent for several minutes, only the fingers slowly pulling at his greying beard betraying any sign of the sombre deliberations unfolding inside his mind.

Morgrim finally glanced over at his old friend. ‘The High King’s deception has drawn it off,’ he agreed, ‘but will it stay away?’ He reached out, taking the spyglass from Drogor. It was a cunningly contrived instrument, fashioned by the engineers of Barak Varr for their once mighty fleet of ships. It would take a long time for the sea hold to recover, but it would recover. The damage wrought upon it would be repaired.

The same would not be said of the elf city Morgrim stared at through the glass. The walls would be cast down, the towers toppled, the streets pulled up and cast into the sea. When the dwarfs were through, there would be nothing left to mark the trespass of the elves. Only in the bitter grudges of the dawi would the existence of the city be remembered.

Athel Toralien, standing against the rolling sea, the golden domes of its towers blazing like fire in the setting sun. The white stone of its streets and walls seeming to glow in the encroaching darkness. It was a captivating sight. Even the dwarfs were compelled to acknowledge the city’s beauty. The oldest parts of the city were readily obvious to Morgrim’s eye. Though built to an elven design, there was no mistaking the heavier construction and ponderous solidity of dwarfish labour. When the asur prince Malekith had founded the city, he’d called upon his friends, the dawi, to make his vision a reality.

Those days were long past, gone as though they’d never been. The old friendship between elf and dwarf would never rise again. There was too much hate, too much blood between them now. Morgrim recalled the confidence Imladrik had shared with him during that last, fruitless effort to negotiate peace. He’d claimed that Malekith yet lived, but that some great affront had driven him into discord with the asur, caused him and his followers to become a renegade people. Even now, Morgrim didn’t know if he put any credence to the story. What he did know was that it didn’t matter. The war wouldn’t end until the asur withdrew to their island kingdoms. That was the only path to peace now.

‘The dragon won’t be back,’ Drogor assured Morgrim. ‘The elgi will be worried about the High King’s army and Tor Alessi. They won’t dare take resources away even when they learn of our attack here.’

Morgrim nodded as he returned the spyglass to Drogor. It was a brilliant piece of strategy the High King had conceived. He was exploiting the arrogance and pride of the elgi to bait a cunning trap. By showing himself at Tor Alessi, he would convince the enemy that the main attack would fall there. Forek and those dawi who knew the elgi best agreed that the elves would never consider the possibility that an assault led by the High King could be a feint because they could never imagine their own Phoenix King would be willing to engage in such a deception and let another take his glory.

The High King’s army was considerable, but it was far from the strength it appeared. Dummies of wood and straw wearing armour fashioned from tin would be carried by the dwarfs when they sallied out towards the walls, metal rods lashed to the shoulders of each warrior supporting scarecrows to left and right. Phoney siege towers, catapults and bolt throwers would be hauled around the forest, furthering the deception. By night, the woods would be aglow with thousands of fires to heighten the notion that Gotrek had brought the full fury of the Karaz Ankor against Tor Alessi.

He would, in time, but that time was not yet. Gotrek was unwilling to leave the elgi their other coastal settlements, bastions from which they could stage their own reprisals against the dawi. Before the head of the elgi serpent was lopped off, the body would be cut asunder. Only then could Tor Alessi be finished.

The elgi would learn that they weren’t the only ones who could trick their enemy with illusions. While High King Gotrek held them at Tor Alessi, Morgrim would bring a much bigger army crashing down into Athel Toralien. The city, more than any other, was ripe for conquest. It had, after all, been partially built by dwarfs.

Morgrim looked back to the cliffs behind him. They were pockmarked with old mine facings. The ore had been played out long ago, but the shafts remained. Brok Stonefist had been the first to conceive the idea of using the cliffs themselves to assault the city. His plan had called, first, for the old mines to be joined to the Ungdrin Ankor, a process that had taken almost a century of excavating deep underground to finally achieve. The second part of Brok’s plan called for vast reserves of zonzharr to be piled within the shafts and used to blast apart the face of the cliff and send it smashing down into the city below.

It was a scheme that called for careful timing and exacting precision. The lower shafts, those nearest the coastal plain, had been shored up and reinforced to withstand the blasting that would demolish the upper heights. Once the top of the cliff was sent crashing down into Athel Toralien, demolishing its walls and razing its outskirts, the dwarfs would emerge from the lower tunnels and rush into the resultant breach. The asur would be unable to act swiftly enough to stop the surge of warriors into their city. The only real threat to the plan had been the dragons. With them gone, victory was assured.

‘Now the elgi will understand why you are Elgidum,’ Drogor said as he followed Morgrim back into the mineshaft. The two thanes passed the engineers and miners inspecting the barrels of zonzharr that had been placed through the passage as they made their way to the tunnels leading back to the lower workings. Drogor had proposed using an even more powerful explosive, but Morgrim had rejected the idea. For this to work, what was needed was precision, not power. Now wasn’t the time to experiment with unknown factors.

Morgrim rested his hand on the elf sword hanging from his belt. ‘They already know,’ he told Drogor. ‘They are just too proud to admit it. So we have to show them – for however long it takes to make them understand.’

Drogor nodded, a cold gleam in his eyes. ‘Would it be such a bad thing if we had to kill them all?’

Morgrim didn’t answer his friend. He didn’t like to think about that question and how easily the answer would come for many dawi. The war was consuming them, becoming what defined them as a people. They were losing their identity. What would the dawi be, he wondered, when they no longer shared an enemy to keep them united?

The streets of Athel Toralien were abuzz with rumour, messengers hastening through the crowded streets to pass word from one house to the next. Lord Ilendril had left the city on his dragon! There was more – Ilendril had been sent away to help Tor Alessi. The High King of the dwarfs, the feared Gotrek, was laying siege to Tor Alessi, bringing with him an army a million strong and armed with siege engines that could pound the colonial capital into rubble. No less than Lady Aelis herself had sent the cry for help, begging Lord Gelthar to send the dragon.

Liandra wasn’t sure how much of the rumours she believed. It was certainly possible that the High King had finally dared to poke his head from the mountains, but talk of an army a million strong was too much for her to entertain. As for the siege weapons, whether the dwarfs had them or not, there was nothing she could do about it. The fate of Tor Alessi was something beyond her now. She had her own quest to consider and her own goals to achieve. If anything, the dwarf attack was a boon to her, for it had drawn Ilendril away from Athel Toralien and left her free to confer with the informant she’d cultivated in his household. It had taken years to find an elf whose greed outweighed his fear of his master.

The informant was waiting for her in the shadow of a large alabaster fountain sculpted in the shape of a swan with outstretched wings. She hurried to the spy, joining him before he could reconsider and slip away. Liandra pressed coins into his hand. The elf quickly hid them beneath his cloak, twisting his fingers in a cabalistic sign to invoke the protection of Mathlann. After what he’d done, he’d be leaving Athel Toralien on the next ship he could find. He didn’t want to be around when Lord Ilendril returned from Tor Alessi with his dragon.

‘There will be a patch of wall at the base of his tower,’ the spy told her. ‘I’ve marked it with a sprig of holly pressed between the stones. Push one of the blocks an arm’s length to the left of the holly and you’ll open a passage into Ilendril’s cellars. What you are seeking is there. May Asuryan watch over you.’

As she watched him hurry down the alleyway, Liandra couldn’t keep the disgust from her face. What she’d been told went beyond the worst of her fears. Ilendril’s filthy magic drew upon the fell forces of Dhar, the blackest shade of magic, but more than that, it was rooted in druchii sorcery. The highborn even had a witch locked away in the dungeons beneath his tower. Not just any witch – she was a witch known to Liandra. Someone she’d thought dead and dust long ago.

Drutheira, the druchii sorceress who had called up a black dragon and destroyed Kor Vanaeth. The witch who had brought about the death of Vranesh.

She’d thought Drutheira slain by the dwarfs when they conquered Oeragor. How the witch had survived, how she had come to fall into the hands of Ilendril, these were questions that didn’t matter to Liandra. All that mattered was that the witch lived and she knew where the druchii was being held.

There was murder in Liandra’s heart as she stalked towards Ilendril’s tower. Once, long ago, she had spared Drutheira, kept her alive so that Imladrik could use her to convince the dwarfs it was the druchii, not the asur, who had fomented discord between their peoples. Now she could use the witch as evidence against Ilendril, to utterly discredit the elf lord’s despicable magic. Yes, she could use Drutheira to do that, but she wouldn’t. Liandra wouldn’t take the chance that the sorceress would again slip through her fingers. This time she would die.

Liandra had just caught sight of the glazed cupola that topped Ilendril’s tower rising above the streets when the entire city seemed to rise up a few inches from the earth and then come slamming down again. She saw the cupola collapse, raining shards of glass down into the streets. The walls of the buildings around her quivered, cracking as the tremors rumbled through them. She was thrown from her feet as the paving stones in the street split.

Any kind of audible sensation was drowned out by a titanic roar, a booming rumble that rolled into the city from the east. She could see stunned elves staggering out from their homes, their mouths open in screams of alarm, but whatever sound rose from them was silenced by the reverberations of that awesome crash. Then, even that sight was blotted out as a massive wave of dust came flooding through the streets, engulfing them in a grainy, choking fog.

Coughing on the dust in her throat, Liandra struggled back to her feet. Her heart hammered in her chest, shock and terror warring for mastery of her body. It was an effort to subdue the instinct to flee, to run in blind panic through the fog. That way lay certain destruction. The only path was to remain calm, to collect herself and use her reason, not unthinking emotion.

The echoes of that first roar were still ringing in her ears, but now she could hear screams and cries as well, muffled as though they came from some great distance. When her hearing cleared, the shrieks resolved themselves into a piteous din that rose from all around her. Wails of anguish and fright that sounded from every building and every quarter.

Liandra felt her heart crack as she heard those mournful cries, the image of Kor Vanaeth after the black dragon ravaged it rising in her mind. She had neglected to help the survivors then, choosing instead to slake her need for revenge.

Forcing herself to focus, she evoked a spell that let her eyes pierce the veil of dust. Through her magically enhanced vision, she could see dazed asur stumbling about in the street, blundering into one another and the rubble that had fallen from the roofs above. Veiled in mantles of dust, the elves looked like ghosts as they fumbled their way blindly through the destruction.

‘Here! To me!’ Liandra cried out, hurrying to the closest of the elves. When she reached for him, the asur seized her arm in a panicked grip, clinging to her like a drowning wretch seizing upon a bit of flotsam. Liandra tried to ease his fierce grip even as she worked more of her magic to allow his eyes to pierce the dust.

‘We have to help the others,’ Liandra told the elf when she saw her magic take effect. ‘Bring anyone you can find to me.’ She waited only long enough to get a nod of agreement, then hurried to reach another survivor and clear his vision with her magic.

Whatever was coming, whatever horror had fallen upon Athel Toralien, being blind and confused would only make it worse. Liandra didn’t have time to think about the tower and Drutheira now. Survival was problem enough for the moment. And then, from the distance, from beyond the veil of dust, rose a fierce roar less deafening but far more malignant than what had come before. It was a sound every elf in Elthin Arvan had come to dread.

‘Khazuk!’ The dwarfish cry of war and battle. Whatever calamity had descended upon Athel Toralien, the dawi were hot on its heels.

Drogor lingered upon the cliff even after the last of the sappers had withdrawn into the tunnels. As they left, the other dwarfs shared knowing glances with one another. It would be hard for them to say it to Morgrim, but among themselves they weren’t so sheepish. The thane from Karak Zorn was insane, and he was going to die because of it.

Drogor cared little for the scorn of the dwarfs. It would take more than a handful of miners to make him abandon his vantage. From the mouth of the mine-working, he could look straight down at Athel Toralien. He could see almost the entirety of the city, could watch the elgi down in the streets as they bustled about on their business, oblivious to the doom that hung over them – the doom Drogor had done his part to arrange.

When the explosives were detonated, the tunnel shook as though gripped by a seizure-suffering giant. Rocks pelted Drogor’s helm, tore at his feathered cloak and ripped at his leathery skin. Dirt and dust rolled down from the ceiling, coating him from head to toe. Dimly he was aware of the roar and rumble of the passage behind him collapsing. It wouldn’t reach him here, at the edge of the working – he could tell as much from the vibrations of the stone and the receding nature of the cave-in. It wouldn’t have mattered if it had drawn towards him; his choice had been made. He was staying to watch the annihilation of the elf city.

Drogor watched the face of the cliff slide away, ripped clear as though by a gigantic axe. Thousands upon thousands of tonnes of stone rushed down at the city. The earth itself seemed to shiver in fear as the avalanche came rolling into Athel Toralien. Doubtless there were cries of alarm from the elgi, screams of terror and moans of disbelief, but any such sounds were utterly devoured by the gargantuan roar of the cascading rocks. As the avalanche smashed into the outer walls, the fortifications were blasted apart, great blocks flung hundreds of feet into the air only to come hurtling down again onto the houses below. A plume of grey dust erupted from the tidal wave of rock, flooding the streets in a rolling fog of dirt and debris.

The avalanche smashed past the walls, torrents of rock gashing Athel Toralien like enormous knives, slicing through the buildings and spilling rubble in every direction. Entire towers were lifted off their foundations and hurled like javelins across the streets to come slamming down in a deluge of broken stone. Drogor smiled when he imagined how many of the elgi were crushed beneath that grotesque rain. It was only the slightest taste of what was to come.

Through the deafening roar of the avalanche, Drogor strained his ears for another sound. Not the faint cries of dead and dying elves, but the war-cry of the dawi. Soon the warriors of the Karaz Ankor would swarm over the rubble, charge across the broken walls to take the stricken city. The elgi might stage some effort at defence, but it would be hopeless. The day was already lost to them.

Drogor glanced back at the fallen tunnel behind him. He’d have to find another way down the cliff now, but just as he’d been determined to watch the cliff come smashing down upon the city, so too he was determined to be there when the last elves were vanquished.

He’d waited too long for this to be denied that satisfaction now.

Forek wrenched his axe from the dying elf, letting the wretch collapse in a gasping heap at his feet. The steelbeard glared down at his latest victim. Merchant, artisan, whatever the foppish swine had been, he should have kept himself in Ulthuan where all elgi belonged. Rubbing his finger along the gory blade, he watched the torchlight glisten on the blood he’d shed. Elgi blood was thin, but it had a curious viscosity about it. Somehow it never failed to remind him of oil – the way light played about it. The sheen of fresh elf blood was something he would never tire of seeing. He lusted after it the way some dawi coveted gold.

‘Lost your taste for glory, brother?’ Forek barked out with a certain disgust when he found Rundin staring at him. The skarrenawi still eschewed armour and his powerfully built body was a mass of scars and wounds left by elgi blades.

‘There’s no glory in butchery,’ Rundin told him.

Forek scowled and kicked the corpse at his feet. ‘You were ready enough to kill the guards. I had to be satisfied with what you left for me.’ He looked beyond Rundin to the other dawi warriors who had followed the two heroes into the devastated streets of Athel Toralien. The initial wave of destruction inflicted by the collapse of the cliff had battered much of the city, leaving behind many buildings with weakened supports and broken foundations. At every turn, facades might come crashing down or a house suddenly collapse into itself as its compromised structure gave out.

The elgi were there too. The dawi met persistent resistance, though never organised opposition. The enemy came at them in dribs and drabs: a few swordsmen here, the odd archer there. Not enough to satisfy either Forek’s thirst for revenge or Rundin’s need for atonement.

Rundin pointed at the elf Forek had killed. ‘They did you a terrible dishonour,’ he told the steelbeard. ‘Don’t let them take even more from you than they have.’

Forek shook his head. ‘All I have left to give them is steel,’ he snarled.

‘If you believe that, then you are dead already,’ Rundin said. He hefted his axe up onto his shoulder and started off down one of the broken streets. Forek watched him go, then turned to the warriors who had been watching the two heroes argue.

‘What does an oathbreaker know of honour?’ Forek cursed, giving the elf corpse another kick. He stared at the other dawi, holding them with his fierce gaze. ‘Only a wattock would find any disgrace in killing an elgi.’ Beckoning to the warriors, he led them away from the street Rundin had followed.

Athel Toralien was a big place and there’d be enough elves to kill without having the disgraced champion of Kazad Kro judging him, Forek decided.

His thoughts still on Rundin’s berating words, Forek almost missed the asur swordsmen in the street ahead. Cursing under his breath, he braced himself as they came at him. For a moment he was by himself, struggling to fend off the furious attack of five elgi blades. The shriek of steel scraping against steel rang out as the elves struck his armour again and again. Several links from his beard of chain were torn loose, the faceplate of his helm dented by the bashing pommel of a longsword.

Then his comrades-in-arms were rushing in. Axe and hammer cracked against elven chain; shields were pressed before elven swords. Inch by inch and foot by foot Forek’s attackers were driven back. Given the space to breathe, the steelbeard rushed at the elves, the murderous runes of his axe glowing as he cleft through armour and flesh alike. In the space of a few heartbeats, the momentum of the battle shifted. The elves were forced onto the defensive, pressed back into the rubble. The advantages of height and reach vanished as the elgi lost their footing on broken, uneven ground. The struggle soon dissolved into a massacre.

The last swordsman, the one the others had striven so valiantly to defend, leapt back when his last companion was brought down. Scurrying to the top of a rubble pile, the elf tried to clamber onto a roof and pull himself to safety. The tiles cracked under his hands, spilling him back into the street.

The dwarfs closed on the fallen elf, but stopped when he suddenly cried out to them in Khazalid. ‘Spare me, dread axes of Karaz Ankor! Let me pay wergild for my life!’ The elf reached to his belt, quickly removing a little casket of silver. Thumbing back the latch, he exposed a collection of gemstones that brought gasps of astonishment from the onlooking dawi. The quality of the stones was obvious at a glance, their value enough to ransom a king.

Forek pushed aside the warriors who started to reach for the elf’s treasure. ‘Who are you?’ he growled in Eltharin. The elf blinked in surprise when he found the masked hero spoke his language. Perhaps he’d heard of the steelbeards. Perhaps he had some inkling of who it was he faced.

‘I am Lord Gelthar of House Derreth,’ the elf answered, turning his hand and displaying the gems for Forek alone. ‘They are all yours if you call your warriors back and let me leave. I will return to Ulthuan. You will never see me again.’

‘No,’ Forek agreed. ‘I never will.’ With a speed that caught Gelthar by surprise, the steelbeard sprang at him. The hideous axe blazed as it was brought crunching down into Gelthar’s skull, splitting his head from crown to jaw. The casket of gems fell from his hand, spilling into the rubble. Forek brought his boot stomping down on the hand of a dwarf who tried to retrieve one of the stones.

‘We’ve rejected his ransom,’ Forek declared. ‘Let the stones rot with his carcass. Then the elgi will know the price of dawi honour.’

Grim nods greeted Forek’s declaration. With a few of their number watching for any straying elgi, the dwarfs gathered up Gelthar’s treasure and returned it to the silver casket. Scornfully, they dropped the casket onto Gelthar’s chest. As much as they coveted the gems, they valued their honour more.

Between Forek and Rundin, the dawi had lessons enough on what it meant to live without honour.

Drutheira crouched down in her cage, shivering as the sounds of battle continued to drift down to her. After the hideous quake that had trembled through her prison and sent her guards fleeing into the tower above, the sounds of conflict had grown both louder and more frequent. She didn’t know what was happening, of course, but she could guess well enough. The city was under attack and things were faring poorly for Athel Toralien. She didn’t think a mere siege could have wrought the turmoil she was hearing. Was it the dwarfs? The dragons? Had Ilendril’s foolishness finally brought him to his just end? Briefly she wondered if it might be her own people, but she discarded that thought. Malekith’s eyes were on Ulthuan, not the colonies. Elthin Arvan was just a distraction, nothing more.

She pulled the shift she wore a bit closer to her, trying to fend off the cold, dank atmosphere of her lonely dungeon. Ilendril had been ungentle in his treatment of her, extending her just enough comfort to keep her alive. She’d wasted away down here in the dark, subsisting on the gruel her gaolers provided her with and such vermin as the length of her chains would let her catch. After so many years of this living hell, she had been looking forward to the day when she was of no further use to Ilendril and her son came to take her life.

A vicious smile fixed itself on her thin face. That, of course, had been before whatever calamity it was struck Athel Toralien. Now circumstances had given Drutheira very different ideas.

The sound of the dungeon door opening drew her attention. Blinking against the harsh light of a torch, it took Drutheira several seconds before she recognised the elf descending the stairs. She should have guessed it would be him. Nobody but Ashelir would trouble themselves over her when the city itself was beset.

‘Checking up on your mother?’ Drutheira mocked. ‘How courteous of you.’

Ashelir set the torch into a sconce and turned towards her. Beneath his cloak he wore full armour, sword and quiver strapped to his lean body. His bow was strung, looped around one shoulder, and beneath his hood he wore a steel helm. The shadow warrior was kitted for battle. He was ready to fight and die, but first he had a bit of murder to attend to.

‘The dwarfs?’ Drutheira asked. ‘This is becoming a habit with them, rescuing me from prison.’

‘This isn’t Oeragor and I’m not the Lady Liandra,’ Ashelir growled at her. ‘I’ll let no one, dawi or asur, take your life. Killing you is the only dream left to me.’

Drutheira cringed, pressing herself to the stone floor. She watched as Ashelir marched across the dungeon, the tramp of his boots sounding like the drums of doom. She watched, studying the hate on his face. There was so little of his father there, so little of Nagarythe. He looked like one of the merciless Naggarothi, bleached of all compassion and pity until only spite and malice remained.

It was when Ashelir thrust at her with his blade that Drutheira sprang into motion. The quake that had shook Athel Toralien had loosened the staples binding her chains to the floor. She’d been able to draw them loose, hiding the chains under her shift. Now, as Ashelir came at her, she whipped one of the chains at him. The steel looped around his wrist, allowing her to tug his arm through the bars of her cage. Caught utterly by surprise, he didn’t react quickly enough to keep the druchii from ripping his dagger from him.

Viciously, Drutheira thrust the captured blade up under her son’s chin, pushing it with all her strength through the roof of his mouth and into his brain. ‘I hope Slaanesh savours your soul for an age or two,’ she snarled into Ashelir’s dying eyes. ‘I should be happy to know you were being tortured in the hereafter.’

Drutheira let her son’s corpse slide down against the bars of her cage. Quickly she lifted the key from his belt and unlocked the door. She stripped the cloak from him before pushing his body into the cage. She regretted leaving behind his sword and armour, but she knew that her years of deprivation had left her too weak to manage either. She only hoped the cloak would be enough to conceal the warding tattoos Ilendril had marked her with. It would be bad enough trying to elude the dwarfs as she made her way from the city. She didn’t need the added ordeal of trying to escape the asur as well.

Pausing only to pluck the torch from the wall, Drutheira hurried up the steps and to the freedom so long denied to her.

For Liandra, it was like Athel Maraya all over again. Handfuls of shocked, confused elves staggering about the dying city, lost and abandoned. She couldn’t leave them. Whatever she wanted for herself, she couldn’t forsake the need she saw all around her. Liandra turned her back on Ilendril’s tower and began to gather the survivors of Athel Toralien to her.

The elf refugees skirted the main rush of the dwarfs. The dawi seemed intent on securing the waterfront and cutting off any retreat by sea, so by pressing landwards Liandra was able to lead the survivors away from most of the dwarf warriors. There were still small bands of roving enemies to contend with, gangs of looters for the most part who were easily dissuaded by any show of force. War brought out the best and worst in any people, and the dawi were no exception.

Fortunately, enough asur warriors had been drawn into Liandra’s mass of refugees to make a decent show of force. With her came militia, Sea Guard, mercenaries and household soldiers, even a few knights. There was also a mage, who’d staggered out from a burning temple to join the exodus. He claimed his talents didn’t lend themselves to martial applications, but Liandra suspected that had more to do with moral qualms than ability. If a crisis arose, she hoped he’d put the lives of his own people ahead of his pacifism.

The warriors and fighters she’d gathered were far outnumbered by the civilians, though. White-haired elders, soft-skinned artisans, haggard fisherfolk, pallid scholars, delicate courtesans and craftsmen – all had come stumbling from the chaos to join the exodus. Children, too, so many it pained Liandra to consider how few would have their parents among the survivors.

‘Where will we go?’ a merchant with blackened skin and charred hair asked Liandra.

‘Away,’ was the only reply she could give him. It was all she could think to do for the moment. To get them away, away from the fighting and destruction. Away from the enemy. Away to anywhere that might offer them a chance to escape.

Through the smoky streets, past the crumbling buildings and the broken towers, the refugees marched. With the dwarfs pressing their attack towards the harbour, Liandra felt their best chances lay in trying to reach one of the landward gates. Obsessed as they were with either loot or revenge, it would take time for the dawi to think about sealing off the lesser gates close to the cliffs. Or at least she prayed that it would be so. If they could gain the Jade Door, then perhaps they would have a chance of reaching the Loren Lacoi before the dwarfs came looking for them.

Little clutches of survivors continued to flock to Liandra, but they were far fewer in number than before. They were entering that part of the city the dwarfs had already struck, the periphery of the districts smashed by the falling cliff. Sometimes they would find the body of a dwarf lying in the rubble, but far more often it was the corpses of asur they passed. Occasionally a cry would ring out as someone in the column recognised a loved one, but most were too dazed to care about the dead.

Liandra wished she could slip into the same numbness. She wished the faces of the slain would stop haunting her for even a few moments. But they wouldn’t. Over and again she saw Vranesh and all those who had perished at Kor Vanaeth. She found herself looking over her shoulder in the direction of Ilendril’s tower.

And then, with a suddenness that shocked her, Liandra found her attention riveted upon an alleyway. A little ragged group of refugees was climbing through the rubble-choked street, striving to reach her column. She gave scant notice to most of them. Her attention was firmly focused upon one particular survivor in a grey cloak, a survivor whose aura was familiar to Liandra’s magesight. Though dimmed and hollowed, subdued by guarding wards and eldritch tortures, it was unmistakable.

It was the aura of Drutheira.

Maybe if the witch’s senses had been whole, if her magic hadn’t been stripped away from her, she would have detected Liandra before her enemy had a chance to rush at her. Snarling in almost bestial exhilaration, Liandra lunged at the sorceress, seizing her cloak in a steely grip. Spitting like a cornered panther, Drutheira recoiled and drew her dagger. The refugees around her scattered, crying out in horror as Liandra tore the cloak from her enemy and revealed the warding tattoos.

Liandra’s sword flashed out, striking Drutheira’s hand, severing it at the wrist. The sorceress shrieked and turned to flee. In her panic, she turned not towards the alley but back to the column of refugees. Sight of the witch and the marks inked into her flesh provoked a dramatic change in the battered survivors. Faces that only a moment before had been lost and forlorn now became contorted with hate and outrage. Hands clenched about broken stones and loose rocks. From somewhere a voice cried out, giving a name to the hate that had galvanised the refugees and drawn them out of their dazed shock.

‘Druchii!’

Even if she’d wanted to, Liandra couldn’t have stopped what happened. A wave of shouting, cursing asur swept down upon Drutheira. Enraged fists brought heavy stones smashing onto her, spilling her to the ground. The mob ploughed her under, bringing their primitive bludgeons crashing down again and again. When at last they were through, what lay strewn along the street wasn’t recognisable as anything any more.

Liandra didn’t linger over the sight. There was no satisfaction in looking at that gory mess. The witch was gone, and in her death she’d managed to take one last thing from Liandra. She’d left a gaping wound inside her where her hate had been. It was strange how that hurt almost as much as losing Vranesh.

The refugees turned away from what they had done, as though they shared the sense of loss Liandra was feeling. But it was only a matter of an instant before they had something more to ponder than the slaughter of a druchii witch. Frightened voices cried out as grim armoured warriors appeared all around them.

Liandra had known their progress through the ruins wouldn’t go unnoticed. She had only hoped they could be out of the city before any organised force moved to stop them. Now she saw how fragile and transitory hope could be. The streets around them were swarming with dawi, not the stragglers and looters they’d chased off before, but disciplined columns of warriors. A regiment of crossbows took position on their right flank, a detachment of bloodied axemen formed up at their rear. Ahead of them, Liandra was stunned to recognise the masked ambassador she’d spared at the Battle of Blind River. The hate exuding from Forek Grimbok was, if anything, even more potent now than it had been then.

A dwarf wearing a wild cloak of feathers appeared at the head of the warriors before Liandra’s refugees. His demeanour was completely different from that of Forek. There was an expression of sadistic enjoyment on his face, a malignance that Liandra hadn’t thought anyone, be they dawi, asur or druchii, could embody. Beside her, she heard the mage from the temple moan in despair. He covered his eyes and grovelled in the street.

‘Kill them,’ the dwarf in the feathered cloak snarled. ‘Kill them all.’

Before the dwarfs could advance, before the crossbows could loose their bolts, a fierce bellow arrested them where they stood. Forcing his way through the throng was another dwarf Liandra recognised. Morgrim, the Elfdoom himself.

‘Stand down!’ Morgrim roared, casting a withering look at the dwarf in the feathered cloak.

‘Don’t sully a great victory with a senseless massacre.’ He turned from his warriors and glowered at Liandra. ‘I remember you. Imladrik’s lady. You understand our tongue?’

Liandra matched Morgrim’s glare. ‘I remember,’ she said. Her eyes fixed on the sword hanging from the thane’s belt. The urge to fling herself upon him rushed through her. It was difficult to put it down, almost as though the idea was being forced into her from somewhere outside herself.

Carefully, she forced herself to relax. If she did anything, if any of them made one move against Morgrim, the dwarfs would slaughter the entire column. She knew that and so did everyone with her. Whatever benefit killing Morgrim might serve the overall war, whatever satisfaction she might derive from it, nothing could justify such a massacre.

‘Surrender your arms,’ Morgrim told her. ‘Surrender and I will guarantee your lives.’

Liandra turned from Morgrim, looking at the dwarf in the feathered cloak and Forek in turn. ‘Can you speak for all your people? You forget that I saw what was done when Kor Vanaeth fell the first time. I was there when Athel Maraya burned. I was there when you took Oeragor.’

Morgrim glowered at her. ‘Your kind should never have come here at all. Everything that has happened was the doing of elgi.’

‘You know that isn’t true,’ Liandra told him. She didn’t need to remind him how Snorri Halfhand had poked and prodded to get his war. In the end, neither side could hold itself blameless. She turned and gestured to the bloody ruin of Drutheira. ‘You saw what happened here? That… that was a druchii. You may recall that Imladrik tried to speak to you of them.’

A tinge of uncertainty crept into Morgrim’s face. Briefly he consulted with a fur-clad dwarf, a scout who no doubt had been watching the refugees and had seen the mob execute one of their own.

‘We have no interest in elgi feuds,’ Morgrim declared, provoking grunts of approval from many of his warriors. He cast his stern gaze across his fighters. ‘Neither do we have any interest in a massacre.’ He fixed his attention on Forek for a moment before turning back to Liandra. ‘Leave your weapons and go. None of my throng will assault you.’

Liandra shook her head. ‘And what of all the other throngs? The land is filled with dawi, dawi who won’t know of the clemency the great Morgrim Elfdoom has extended to the wreckage of Athel Toralien. If we are to be butchered by dwarfs, let it be here and now.’

Morgrim was pensive a moment. Liandra knew it could still go either way with him. He might use force to seize the refugees and lead those who couldn’t fight into captivity. In the end, it was his conscience that won out. He could afford to allow the handful of warriors among Liandra’s exodus to escape. They wouldn’t diminish the victory he’d won or the damage he’d inflicted against the asur.

‘You’ll not be harmed by my army,’ Morgrim said. He reached to his neck, ripping free one of the amulets he wore. ‘Show this to any dawi you meet and they will know you tell them the truth when you say it is by the grace of Morgrim Bargrum that you are alive.’ He cast the amulet at Liandra’s feet. ‘I can speak only for the warriors who have sworn fealty to me. Any others you encounter may not be moved to show you the same mercy.’

The dwarf lord watched as Liandra retrieved the amulet from the ground. ‘Leave,’ he declared, pointing his axe in the direction of the forests. ‘Keep going until no dawi ever has to look at you again. Only then will the threat of our axes be gone from your necks.’

Liandra bowed her head, an act of obeisance an elf rarely afforded to a dwarf. She could imagine the discord Morgrim’s act of compassion would sow among his vassals. Already she could see the feathered dwarf whispering something to Forek. Somehow, the sight brought cold dread closing around her heart.

‘Hurry,’ she told the refugees with her. ‘They might change their minds at any moment.’

The elves didn’t need to be told twice. With such haste as they could, carrying the wounded and dying with them, the last survivors of Athel Toralien filed past the grumbling, jeering ranks of the dwarfs.

It was only much later, when they were away from the city and deep in the forest, that Liandra would notice the mage was gone. None among the refugees had noticed the elf lying in the street as they hurried past the dwarfs. None had noticed while the mystic clawed out his own eyes and bled out in the gutter. None had heard the word he muttered as he died.

‘Daemon.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Scouring of Sith Rionnasc
536th year of the reign of Caledor II

‘They’re coming.’

The words reached her in a subdued whisper that was more awful than any cry of alarm or scream of terror could be. It meant that the enemy was near enough that they had to be careful about not being overheard.

Liandra rose from the mossy rock she was sitting on and looked at the hardened scout who stood before her. He was whipcord thin, dressed in crude buckskin and wolf-fur, a brown pelt to better match the foliage. A cloak of woven leaves was stretched across his lean shoulders. His boots were leather reinforced with animal bone; the sheath of his sword was fashioned from wood and lined with weasel-skin. The bow he carried was yew strung with bear-gut, and his arrows were fletched with the feathers of shrikes and hawks.

Everything about him had come from the forest, even the hard cast of his face and the sinewy toughness of his skin. It was hard to imagine him as a child playing in a marble-walled hall in Athel Toralien. But, then, that had been long ago. Another lifetime.

When she’d led the refugees from the dying city, the path had seemed so clear to Liandra. She’d lead her people inland, use the forest for cover, and then strike out along the coast to Sith Rionnasc. From there, her people could find passage to Tor Alessi or Sith Remora or back to Ulthuan if they chose.

If only it had stayed that simple. From the start a pall had hung over their retreat. Morgrim had extended his clemency to them, but even among his army there were elements who demurred. It hadn’t taken long before a regiment of dwarfs led by Forek Grimbok came looking for them. It wasn’t hard for the dwarfs to guess what Liandra’s intentions were, nor was it hard for them to block the way.

Every time the refugees tried to break out onto the coastal plains, the dwarfs had been there waiting. There was no question of fighting them; the only choice had been to retreat back into the forest and lose their enemies among the trees. Another enemy would have tired of the chase after a time, but the dwarfs were a stubborn and intractable people. Once they had an idea in their heads it was almost impossible to remove it. Even more so when their warchief believed himself to have been shamed by the refugee’s leader.

Liandra realised how little she truly appreciated or understood the dawi mentality. Her act of mercy towards Forek had engendered a vicious resentment that had only festered and grown more malignant over the years. She’d magnified the shame he felt at what King Caledor had done to him, and the worst thing in the world that could be done to a dwarf was to make him feel shame.

‘How far?’ Liandra asked. The dawi disliked the forests and usually didn’t penetrate too deeply when they took it into their heads to go looking for the elves. If they were far enough away, Liandra could pass the warning along to the camps, get her people to scatter.

Her people. She still wasn’t sure how it had happened. Maybe it was simply because she’d led them from Athel Toralien or stood up against Morgrim. Maybe it was nothing more than her highborn station, the rank she enjoyed back in the courts and grandeur of Ulthuan. Maybe it was just that there was no one else willing to assume responsibility for five hundred refugees. Whatever the cause, she’d been accepted as leader of the elves who’d fled Athel Toralien. They looked to her for guidance, trusted her judgement, leapt at her every command. For Liandra, the faith her followers invested in her was a grave burden. They trusted her, but she had no such delusions about her own infallibility. The city her father had entrusted to her had been twice destroyed, she’d led her dragon to its death and she’d watched her lover die. There were so many mistakes and always it had been others left to pay for them.

The young scout shook his head. ‘Not far enough. Maybe two miles. My lady, I think this time they mean to pursue us wherever we go. I’ve never seen them come into the forest in such numbers. The masked dwarf leads them.’

Liandra nodded. Of course Forek would be there, goading the dwarfs on. If he couldn’t lead them, then he would shame them by reminding them of what he’d suffered. Insulting a dwarf’s pride was dangerous, but it was the quickest way to push him forwards. Forek had become a shrewd manipulator of his own people since devoting himself to destroying the refugee asur.

‘This is your trial.’ The statement came from a wispy, frail-looking elf maiden with golden hair and strange amber eyes. Aismarr’s eyes were the most striking thing about her. They were at once dull like an animal’s yet at the same time impossibly wise. Liandra was always reminded of the way an owl or a raven looked, at once brutish and profound. Aismarr hadn’t been in Athel Toralien. She and the mangy hunting dog that always crept by her side had joined them after they came into the forest. Whenever anyone asked her where she was from, she’d simply say, ‘Loren Lacoi.’

Liandra looked at the elf maid, trying to find some recognisable emotion in her strange eyes. ‘We have escaped them before,’ she said. ‘We will do so again.’ She started to call out to the other elves in her camp. By design, the refugees kept themselves in loose groups of no more than thirty, using fleet-footed runners to maintain communication with each other. It was deemed a good way to keep the dwarfs from finding the asur – and if they did, from catching them all in the same trap.

Aismarr caught Liandra’s arm before she could call out her orders. ‘There is a season for flight and a season for fight. The time of the deer is over. Now you must be the wolf.’ She looked up, staring at the trees with her strange eyes. ‘You cannot escape this time. This is your trial.’

Something in Aismarr’s voice made Liandra hesitate. She was right. They couldn’t keep running away, sinking deeper and deeper into the forest. They were subsisting on roots and berries, on such game as the scouts could bring back to their camps. Their clothes were scraps stitched together from furs and skins, from leaves and vines. They were losing themselves, vanishing into this primitive squalor. They huddled in tents and lean-tos where once they had walked marble halls and slept upon silken sheets. The dwarfs didn’t need to kill them to destroy them. The forest was already doing that all on its own.

‘The dwarfs, are they scattered or do they march in a column?’ Liandra asked her scout.

The youth was thoughtful for a moment. ‘From what I could see, they have sent out pickets, but most of them are in a single body led by the masked dwarf.’

Liandra cursed. The pickets would be rangers and long experience had forced a grudging respect for those dwarfs upon her. They were as capable as any asur huntsman when it came to finding and following a trail. Forek had made good use of his rangers in his earlier searches, twice managing to catch one of the elf camps.

But for the rangers, Liandra would have tried an attack against the dwarfs. She could muster about three hundred fighters from her followers. Few had swords or any weapons of steel, it was true, but every one had a bow. If they could surprise the dwarfs…

She clenched her fists in a fit of frustration. If not for the rangers, they might have had a chance. If they could strike the dwarfs, fade back into the trees and then hit them again, victory would be achievable.

‘Do not worry about their rangers,’ Aismarr said. She was still looking at the trees, watching the branches swaying in the breeze. ‘They will not trouble you.’

There was no reason for Liandra to believe the elf maid’s words, yet she was more certain of them than anything she’d ever been told. How, why, she couldn’t begin to guess, but somehow she knew the dwarf rangers wouldn’t be there to help Forek’s troops.

‘Send runners to all the camps,’ Liandra called out to the elves around her. ‘Every asur able to draw a bow is to come here at haste.’ A fierce smile spread on her face. ‘We won’t run any more. Today we show the dwarfs why they should keep to their burrows and holes!’

Liandra saw the excitement on the faces of her followers as they hurried away to carry her commands to the other camps. Maybe some of her own thirst for battle had passed on to them. She hoped so, for they would need all their courage and resilience in the fight ahead of them.

Aismarr reached down and stroked the neck of her dog. The animal licked her hand, then turned and raced away into the trees. She watched it until it was lost among the undergrowth, then she turned and looked at Liandra. ‘This is your trial,’ she repeated. ‘When you fight the dwarfs, remember that.’

Overhead, Liandra could hear the branches swaying and creaking, the rustle of the wind through the leaves. Somehow, the sounds seemed sinister to her now.

Like the whispers of magistrates sitting in judgement of the accused.

Draukhain settled onto its perch just beneath the tower’s spire, its great wings folding against its back. Thoriol’s cloak whipped about him as the dragon’s settling wings sent a hot breeze wafting down the drake’s back. For an instant, the prince worried about his appearance, then laughed at his concern. No one was going to criticise the decorum of a highborn sitting on the back of a dragon.

They called it the Tower of Mathlann and it was the highest point in Sith Rionnasc. From the tower, Thoriol could look out into the vast fields and meadows that stretched away in every direction. Little fingers of sapphire water wound their way between vast gardens of brilliant flowers, fruit orchards and olive groves, crops of corn and wheat and millet, sunken ponds for rice. The lands around Sith Rionnasc were the richest in the asur colonies, the breadbasket of Elthin Arvan. Except for Tor Alessi itself, nowhere had been more fiercely defended by the elves. A ring of keeps surrounded the farmland. The great dam upriver that chained the Anurein and fed the intricate canal system was built like a fortress itself, with great towers and parapets, batteries of ballistae and one of the largest garrisons in the colonies. Seven times the dwarfs had tried to capture the dam; seven times they had been sent away to bury their dead and lick their wounds.

At the heart of the farmland was Sith Rionnasc itself, a sprawling coastal settlement that perhaps lacked the cosmopolitan flair of Tor Alessi and the grandeur of its noble houses, but which compensated for that lack of refinement with the buzz of enterprise. An endless stream of ships pulled into the city’s harbour, taking on loads of grain, vegetables, fruits and flowers that would be carried throughout the asur empire. From dawn until well after twilight, the waterfront would be a bustling hive of activity as cargo was loaded onto vessels bound for Lothern and the ten kingdoms. Many a fortune was made by those who travelled the trade route between Sith Rionnasc and the shores of Ulthuan, and the fame of captains who could make that journey in the shortest amount of time was a thing of fascination in the courts and tea houses of the elves.

Such, Sith Rionnasc had been. Looking down from the Tower of Mathlann, Thoriol saw only the spoiled echoes of that past grandeur. The fields had fallen fallow, the meadows become overgrown. Most of the groves and orchards had been cut down, their shadowy expanses deemed inadvisable by a people who now had good reason to desire an unobstructed view of the approaches to their city. Here and there some of the flowers lingered on, going wild and expanding furiously beyond the acres they’d originally occupied. Tulips and roses were the most abundant, their red petals merging into a sanguine sea when seen from Thoriol’s vantage. The ghosts of the warriors who had died defending these lands, perhaps. Many of the keeps that had guarded the breadbasket of Elthin Arvan were nothing but broken jumbles of stone now, beaten into rubble by the fury and tenacity of the dwarfs.

Now they had returned once more, in numbers he had never imagined to be possible. Like some colossal centipede of steel, the dwarfs came, tromping across the barren fields and wasted pastures, through the ruined meadows and desolate orchards. Their goal, of course, was to lug their catapults and siege towers close enough that they could bombard the city. They’d tried such tactics before, but never with enough strength to make their threat reality. That was different now. This wasn’t just the king of some mountain hold trying to claim glory for himself. The banners Thoriol gazed down upon bore the device of Morgrim himself, the infamous Elfdoom, conqueror of Athel Toralien, destroyer of Athel Maraya.

Killer of Prince Imladrik.

We could swoop down and roast the vermin in their armour until their little champion shows himself. Then we’d take our time ripping him asunder.

Thoriol could feel Draukhain’s rage flow through him. The wrath of a dragon was an awful, primordial fury that its rider could feel in his very bones. The prince reeled in his saddle, clenching his jaw against the painful psychic resonance.

‘Today is not the day for revenge,’ Thoriol told the gigantic reptile upon whose shoulders he sat. The regret with which he denied Draukhain’s vengeful urges was more painful than the resonance that shivered through his spirit. He would have liked nothing more than to do just as the dragon wanted, to go down there and slaughter dwarfs until his father’s murderer showed himself. He’d give almost anything for that. But the one thing he wouldn’t surrender was his duty to his fellow asur. His uncle would never understand that, the kinship between highborn and commoner, noble and peasant. In King Caledor’s view the king was above everyone and obligated to no one. Thoriol couldn’t accept such a vision.

Then you intend to fight as this petty general would have you fight? You intend that we should fly… with them?

The general Draukhain mentioned was Prince Yverian, the latest noble to be dispatched to Elthin Arvan by King Caledor. Like all the others, Yverian had been chosen for his ambitious streak, his desire to take the battle to the dwarfs rather than sit behind walls and build up his defences. He’d been a cavalry commander fighting with the druchii in Naggaroth, but with that campaign fading so that it more resembled a boar hunt than a war, his family had petitioned the king to find a more auspicious battlefield. He’d been sent to replace Lady Kelsei and his first efforts had been to organise Lord Ilendril’s dragons into a strike force that could hit the dawi wherever they mustered in great numbers. The only defence, in Yverian’s eyes, was to attack the enemy before they came calling.

It was a tactic the dwarfs had exploited time and again. Much as they had when Athel Toralien fell, they would gather a huge army only to disperse once they had the dragons where they wanted them. While the wyrms were away chasing shadows, other throngs would spill from their tunnels to attack their real targets. Many lives had been lost before Yverian agreed that he had to change his tactics, to become less reactive and more strategic about where he would send his strongest warriors.

Thoriol looked out over the city. Three of Ilendril’s wyrms were perched upon other towers, watching the dwarfs below. They represented almost half of his total complement – perhaps more than half since Ilendril himself and the great crimson beast he rode were among those present. Malok was a gigantic brute, only slightly smaller than Draukhain and perhaps a bit more massive in its overall build. The wyrm exuded an awful atmosphere of brooding malignance; when he gazed at Malok, Thoriol could think only of a seething volcano just at the edge of eruption. Despite his disgust for the noble, he’d even tried to warn Ilendril, cautioning him about how great his steed’s enmity towards him was. The warning, of course, had fallen on deaf ears.

That is what they are, these dragons of the far lands. They are hate and greed and arrogance. They care nothing for anything except themselves, they think of nothing greater than their own hubris. That is why they can be chained, because for all their pride and strength, each of them is utterly alone.

Thoriol looked down at Draukhain. The enormous blue head had turned to stare at Malok. The drakes of Ulthuan acknowledged a kinship with the wyrms of Elthin Arvan, but that was as far as their connection went. Draukhain considered creatures like Malok to be raw, savage things. They lacked the introspection of those who slumbered beneath the Dragonspine, the perspective to see beyond themselves. The nearest comparison Draukhain could make for Thoriol was the difference between the asur and the human barbarians of the wilds. There was enough similarity between them in form and shape that the asur should be disquieted to see humans enslaved, but that didn’t mean they held men to be equals or kindred souls.

‘You will show wyrm and asur alike what real pride and real strength are,’ Thoriol told Draukhain. He could feel the drake’s amusement at his words.

It is impossible to show anything to the blind, but we will try, little one.

The blast of horns from the distant towers was the signal that sent Malok and the other wyrms rising into the sky. It was the command from Prince Yverian that the dragon riders should launch their attack against the advancing dwarfs, targeting their siege engines and then their heavy infantry – the foes the archers would have the hardest time keeping from the walls. Thoriol watched the wyrms for a moment, fanning their leathery pinions as they climbed, finding the thermals that would sweep them out and away towards the invaders. Even knowing the miserable magic that forced the reptiles to obey, he was impressed by the majestic spectacle of the thing. Ilendril’s vassal riders fanned out until their dragons were in unison with Malok, taking up an aerial formation more perfect than anything he could remember the riders of Caledor attempting.

‘Tricks taught to dogs,’ Thoriol grunted, shaking his head and snapping from his reverie. He watched Ilendril’s riders a moment longer. As the king’s nephew, he was outside the command of anyone in Elthin Arvan, even Prince Yverian. He was under no order, no obligation to take any part in the fighting. He could stay here and watch and there would be none with authority to condemn him. Indeed, it was probably what the king would expect of him, to keep away from the battle and not expose himself to risk.

Knowing that made it all the easier for Thoriol to urge Draukhain into the air, to send the dragon flying out over the city, out towards the advancing dwarfs. Regiments of dour axemen, the horns of their helms capped in gold and silver. Vast companies of quarrellers, their crossbows resting against their mail-clad shoulders. Brigades of longbeards, their flowing white beards adorned with charms and amulets of ruby, jade and sapphire. Great axes from the far northern holds, wings of metal soaring out from the sides of their helms, their immense blades etched with the snarling faces of giants and dragons. Among the infantry came the dwarfs’ artillery, grotesque bolt throwers carved to resemble wyverns and wyrms, huge catapults with buckets shaped like the talons of trolls and monsters. It was a grim and terrible host, an army such as only the Karaz Ankor could muster.

Obligations, orders and the regard of his uncle weren’t the things that mattered to Thoriol. What mattered was his duty to the colonies and the asur – and that was something even the king wouldn’t take away from him.

Draukhain was a powerful beast, but its wings had never healed properly after the battle for Oeragor. It lagged behind Ilendril’s wyrms as the other dragons dived down upon the vanguard of the dwarf army, a phalanx of warriors in heavy plate and bearing great rectangular shields. They advanced slowly, even for dwarfs, but at first Thoriol didn’t guess the reason for their ponderous tread.

As the dragons descended, the dwarfs raised their shields, presenting them with an unbroken wall of defiant steel. The wyrms drew up short just above them, spewing withering blasts of fire down upon them. For an instant all was lost behind a pall of writhing flame and billowing smoke. It was only as the draconic fury began to abate that Thoriol noted the runes shining upon the shields of the dawi. In past battles, he’d seen champions and thanes equipped with enchanted armour that could resist dragon fire, but he’d never suspected that whole regiments could be afforded similar protection. The art of crafting such devices must be tedious and costly, otherwise the dawi would have sent such warriors into every battle.

At once, Thoriol suspected that the dwarfs would not invest such expense simply to defend against dragons. He brushed his hand along Draukhain’s neck, coaxing the drake to slow its flight.

In a matter of a few heartbeats, Thoriol saw the wisdom of such caution. At the heart of the dwarf formation, concealed and protected by the shields of the warriors, a compact, wheeled bolt thrower was suddenly exposed. The dwarf artillerists hastily aimed their already loaded weapon and loosed a great barbed bolt into one of the wyrms. The missile struck the reptile even as it tried to climb away, slashing through its side and pinning its left foreleg to its breast. The stricken dragon howled and roared, sizzling blood steaming from its wound.

See what befalls the rider now that he has lost control, Draukhain cautioned Thoriol.

The rider of the wounded dragon was screaming, his arm and side coated in blood. The elf gave no thought to maintaining command over his steed, of using the talisman hanging from his neck to demand the creature’s obedience. So it was that he didn’t stop the wyrm from slashing the straps of his saddle with its remaining foreclaw and sending the asur plummeting earthwards. Before he could hit, the elf’s dragon dived down and snatched him in its jaws, biting him in half with a vicious snap of its fangs. In its rage, the wyrm ignored the dwarfs and their bolt thrower, and the fact that the weapon had been rearmed. A second missile speared through its neck and knocked the beast from the sky.

Ilendril and his remaining vassal peeled away from the dwarf dragon-killers, retreating into the sky beyond the reach of their missiles. The dawi cheered, hurling their derision at the fleeing wyrms. They reformed their ranks, pressing on towards the city. Behind them came the bulk of the dwarf force with their onagers and siege towers, a rumbling sea of glistening steel and sombre banners, the tide of the mountain holds made manifest. These were the dawi and they had come to Sith Rionnasc for blood and vengeance.

Thoriol clenched his fist in frustration. He knew that he couldn’t risk taking Draukhain close to the dragon-killers. The drake’s compromised wings would make him an easy target for the artillerists. They might be able to circle around, to harry the flanks, maybe destroy any supplies the dawi had stockpiled, but such tactics would hardly blunt the impetus of the advance.

Even as Thoriol urged Draukhain to swing around the dawi force and set upon it from the rear, Ilendril and Malok reappeared. The crimson dragon was carrying a great chunk of rubble in its claws, the broken side of an abandoned keep. The wyrm didn’t descend to breathe his fire on the dragon-killers. Instead, it climbed high above them, far beyond the reach of their bolt thrower. Then, when it felt it was high enough, Malok let go of its burden. The massive stone crashed down upon the regiment, smashing their rune-inscribed shields, flattening their steel plate, pulverising their bones.

The dragon-killers were thrown into disarray by the vicious attack. Before they could recover, before they could defend the bolt thrower, Draukhain was diving down upon them, its fire shooting across their ranks. Some of the dwarfs were collected enough to lower their shields and guard themselves against the flames, but many more were too dazed by Malok’s attack to remember their discipline. They collapsed as the flames consumed them, flesh and metal bubbling away in greasy threads of steam.

Draukhain landed full among them, its claws lashing out and smashing the bolt thrower, its tail whipping around to scatter the armoured dawi. Thoriol stabbed his lance into a bearded warchief, spitting him like a boar. A slash of the dragon’s claw ripped the dying dwarf free so its rider could attack again. For several minutes, elf and dragon lost themselves in a frenzy of carnage, careless of anything but the enemies around them and the power to annihilate them.

The sound of dragon fire searing its way towards them was what drew Thoriol from the red mist of battle. He looked up and saw Malok winging its way through the sky. Nearby, a band of dwarfs lay burning, caught by the wyrm’s fire. Thoriol wondered if Ilendril had deliberately allowed the warriors to draw so close, so that he might have an excuse to offer if the prince should accidentally be caught in his steed’s fire.

Whatever the cause, it was clear to Thoriol that they couldn’t remain. There were too many dwarfs to fight. Other bolt throwers were being hurriedly wheeled into range. Once they were, they would bring Draukhain down in a concentrated attack.

‘Come, mighty one,’ Thoriol told the dragon. ‘We’ve done what we can for now. Let the dawi worry themselves over how we shall acquit ourselves later.’

Sweeping his claws across a last clutch of dwarfs, Draukhain climbed back into the sky, uttering a fierce roar as it swung back towards the city. From the dragon’s back, Thoriol could see the vast army continuing its march. The dragons had massacred the vanguard regiment, but they represented only the smallest fraction of the whole, a speck of sand on the beach.

Even with a dozen dragons, Thoriol wondered if the asur would be able to hold back such a horde.

Sith Rionnasc rested against the shore of the northern sea on land the elves had laboriously reclaimed from the waves by means of clever spells and even more clever engineering. A wide crescent spread about the bay, circling the water on three sides. It was here that the storehouses, shops, homes and civic institutions had been raised. Out in the middle of the harbour a broad island stood, the only ground in Sith Rionnasc that didn’t naturally belong to the sea. Here, in the oldest part of the settlement, the towers of the nobility had been reared along with the temples in which the asur paid homage to their gods.

The dawi assault against Sith Rionnasc had been exactingly prepared over the course of a hundred years. Ever since the siege of Barak Varr, the dwarfs had intended to make an example of the city that had once been the sea hold’s greatest trading partner. It wasn’t enough to simply take Sith Rionnasc; the city had to be obliterated, every trace of it smashed and destroyed.

Inside the shelter afforded by a broken elgi keep, Morgrim studied the battlefield. The fire-breakers had claimed one of the drakk, a grand omen for any conflict. The others had returned to avenge the fallen wyrm, and Morgrim mourned the loss of so many brave warriors. Their names would be recorded, entered among the grudges owed by both elgi and drakk. At the same time, they’d served a heroic purpose. They’d taught the dragons a lesson in humility. The monsters now knew they couldn’t run rampant against the dawi. Now they knew that the dawi could fight back – and bring them down.

Archers on the walls took their toll from the dwarfs as the invaders closed upon the city. Elgi bolt throwers and catapults exacted their due as well. Thankfully there had been little contribution from their mages, a circumstance that caused Morgrim concern but one that he intended to exploit for as long as possible. He would almost feel happier seeing lightning flashing out from the towers or burning rocks shooting down at his warriors. It would mean that the mages hadn’t divined the real nature of this attack.

Morgrim watched as the first of the bolt throwers loosed its missile at Sith Rionnasc’s walls. More than simply an oversized arrow, the weapon hurled a great steel grapnel at the fortification. A thick chain unspooled behind the grapnel, but it wasn’t there so that the dawi might climb up it and gain a presence on the wall. Instead, the moment the grapnel caught, a score of stout dwarf warriors began to work a great winch set behind the weapon. The chain soon became taut and then, as the strain steadily increased, the grapnel pulled down a section of the wall.

In half a dozen places around the fortifications of Sith Rionnasc, similar grapnels were performing the same function. A score of the machines, slowly pulling down the city walls. The army made no move to force or expand any breaches. Catapults lobbed boulders into the city, crossbows loosed bolts from the platforms of great siege towers, but these were to keep the elgi away from the grapnels. That was the real thrust of the attack and every effort was being made to prevent the thrust from being repelled.

‘You sent for me, my lord?’

Morgrim looked away from his study of the battlefield, folding the spyglass he’d been given by King Onkmarr of Barak Varr. He thrust the contraption into his belt next to Ifulvin and turned to greet his visitor. He was surprised to find that High Runelord Morek wasn’t alone. Beside him was the savage-looking Rundin Torbansonn. He gave the half-naked champion only a brief glance, then returned his gaze to the runelord. ‘You needn’t say it like that, Morek,’ he admonished. ‘We’ve been friends too long for that.’

‘I suspect that it is duty, not friendship, that summoned me,’ Morek answered.

Morgrim shook his head. ‘Every time I see you, you get that little bit more dour and cheerless. If you start speaking in riddles, I promise that as a thane of Karaz-a-Karak, I will brain you.’ He waved his hand towards the distant city. ‘They are bringing down the walls. I think tomorrow night we will be ready. Do you think your magic has kept the elgi from spying out the plan?’

‘Eight runelords from as many strongholds, each bringing with him an Anvil of Doom,’ Morek observed. ‘Such a concentration of magic hasn’t gone unnoticed. The elgi know we are here. However, I am certain they don’t know our purpose. If they did, they would have taken action by now. We have expended a great amount of energy to keep them blind to our intentions.’

‘Then you foresee success?’ Morgrim asked. He raised his hand in a concession of defeat when he saw the frown that appeared on Morek’s face. ‘I should know better than to ask a runelord about the future. That is how problems start. Prophecy is the worst riddle of them all.’

Instead of improving his disposition, the thane’s levity only broadened Morek’s scowl. ‘One doesn’t need the ambiguity of a prophecy to take bad counsel.’ He stared hard into Morgrim’s eyes. The question had vexed him for a long time now, but he was determined that he would ask it. ‘What kind of advice do you take from Drogor Zarrdum?’

Now it was Morgrim’s turn to scowl. ‘He is a friend. I am not so feckless that position and power make me forget my friends. Whether they be a runelord or a wandering adventurer from Karak Zorn.’

‘He was Prince Snorri’s friend too,’ Morek reminded him. ‘You were there. Maybe you remember the guidance he offered the prince? Did his advice lead to wisdom or to tragedy?’

‘That was a long time ago,’ Morgrim said. ‘Much has changed. For all of us. We’ve all become harder, less prone to mercy.’

‘There is a difference between mercy and morality,’ Morek said. ‘To spare a warrior on the field of battle is mercy.’

Morgrim could see where Morek’s words were leading. Somehow he found even the suggestion to be threatening. Dimly, deep down inside him, he felt an irrational anger flare up. ‘Drogor has suffered more than most. If his counsel is sometimes unduly vicious, then the bitterness that makes it so is not so strange.’

‘Strange,’ Morek repeated the word, letting it hang in the air between them. He tapped his runestaff against the floor. ‘Tell me, how well do you know your old friend from Karak Zorn? Would you say he is the same dwarf you knew from the days of peace?’

Before Morgrim could give the question any thought, an answer rang out from away to his left. The three dwarfs turned to see the subject of that question climbing down a set of crumbling stairs, his feathered cape rustling about his shoulders.

‘War changes us all,’ Drogor said, his tone neutral. ‘What dawi of conscience could say it hasn’t? Are you, Morek Furrowbrow, the same zaki who doted upon Ranuld in his senility, or has the war made you expand your horizons and think for yourself?’

‘Mind your tongue, ufdi,’ Rundin warned. ‘That is a runelord you mock.’

Morgrim raised his hands, motioning all of his companions to calm themselves. If Drogor had been listening from the floor above, he could understand how the thane might be upset, but that was hardly an excuse for rudeness.

‘Oathbreaker, be thankful I do not attend your words,’ Drogor spat, savouring the flush of colour that swept through Rundin’s face.

‘Spying on your friend, Drogor of Karak Zorn?’ Morek wondered, gesturing with his staff at the crumbled ceiling.

Drogor smiled. ‘I am never far from my friends. They are not so numerous that I neglect them.’ His eyes narrowed as he focused upon something in Morek’s hand.

‘Relent!’ Morgrim barked out. ‘This bickering is disgraceful. The elgi are the enemy, save your anger for them.’

Morek’s voice was barely a whisper and within it was a quality Morgrim had never heard before, a sound of terror. ‘There are older enemies than the elgi.’ Morek held forth the artefact that had so caught Drogor’s attention. It was something he’d retrieved from the darkest vaults of Karaz-a-Karak, something locked away among the trophies of Snorri Whitebeard. It was a simple thing, just a feather, but as he held it towards Drogor, the object began to pulse and vibrate with scintillating colours.

Drogor’s face twisted into a monstrous leer. In a single bound he reached the bottom of the steps, not even seeming to feel the impact as his armoured weight cracked one of the flagstones beneath him. Another spring brought him before Morek. Deftly he snatched the feather out of the runelord’s hand. ‘What a clever maggot,’ Drogor hissed in a voice that no longer even possessed an echo of the dwarf’s tones.

Morek raised his runestaff, the metal rod already glowing with power, but a single blow of Drogor’s hand sent the dwarf hurtling across the chamber. He slammed into the far wall to crash in a heap among the rubble. Rundin rushed at him next, only to receive similar treatment.

‘I thought I lost this somewhere,’ Drogor said. He pressed the glowing feather against his cape. The feathers shifted, pulling themselves aside to allow the new one to join them. As it attached itself, the entire garment began to pulse and throb with a dazzling prism of colours.

Numb with horror, Morgrim couldn’t find the voice to howl a war-cry as he charged the thing he had called Drogor. His foe slashed out at him with a hand suddenly tipped with vulturine talons and fitted to an arm three times its original length. The monstrous limb caught Morgrim by the neck and thrust him against the ceiling.

‘Does this mean we aren’t friends any more?’ Drogor mocked. The dwarf’s face was slowly melting, flesh dripping in obscene streams into his beard. ‘To be honest, your compassion was becoming tedious. I was thinking you’d make a better martyr than a leader. A much better force to push the war forward.’ He cocked his corroding head to one side. Clusters of eyes had begun to sprout from the gleaming bone of his exposed skull. These fixed Morgrim with a quizzical stare.

‘What was that you asked?’ Drogor wondered. He relaxed his grip enough that Morgrim was able to drag a breath into his gasping lungs.

‘You did this,’ Morgrim moaned. ‘You goaded us into war with the elgi.’

A ghastly, bubbling laugh wheezed from the mush of Drogor’s face. ‘You did this to yourselves,’ he cackled. ‘I am simply… a spectator. It was your pride and stubbornness that brought war to your peoples. Now it will go on and on until you are both wasted, ruined shells of what you were. What delight more delicious than watching enemies destroy themselves? If only everything could be so obliging!’

As he laughed, Drogor’s head spun completely around to glare at Rundin as the hill dwarf flung himself at the monster once more. The shimmering cape now became a set of immense wings, fanning out and smashing the skarrenawi to the floor. ‘You should have stayed in your hole and died with your little king,’ he sneered, as the feathers of his wings slashed and cut the tattooed champion.

Still gripped by Drogor’s hideous arm, Morgrim looked longingly at his axe lying on the floor far below. Then his hand fell to the sword hanging from his belt. Without hesitation, he drew Ifulvin and raked the blade across the monstrous arm.

Drogor cried out in surprise as syrupy ichor drooled from the ugly gash. His hand released Morgrim, leaving the thane to crash ungently to the floor. His head little more than an exposed skull riddled with clusters of eyes, the monster stalked towards Morgrim.

‘Thank you for reminding me,’ Drogor hissed. ‘It would be disgraceful to make a dawi of such noble rank die behind a lunatic from the hills.’ The creature’s claws flashed out, seizing Morgrim’s arms. A brutal twist sent Ifulvin clattering to the floor. ‘I will rend you into enough pieces that they can put a bit of you in each stronghold. Would you like that, Morgrim Would-be-King?’

A crackling bolt of amber lightning scorched across the daemon’s twisted frame. Again, Drogor turned his head impossibly around to stare back across his shoulders. His myriad eyes focused upon Morek. Uttering a bestial shriek, the daemon unleashed a withering blast of unholy energy at the runelord. The glowing staff in his hands corroded, flaking away into little slivers of sludge.

‘Wait your turn,’ the daemon hissed.

Despite his injury, Morek managed to smile back at the monster. ‘You first.’

Too late the daemon appreciated the limitations of its fleshy frame. Despite its myriad eyes, it had been too focused upon the runelord. It didn’t see Rundin as the mangled dwarf limped across the floor to take up both Azdrakghar and Ifulvin. With elven blade and dwarfish axe, the champion of the skarrenawi turned and charged at the monster.

Morgrim’s axe crunched through Drogor’s armour, biting down to sever the spine. Imladrik’s sword licked across the arms holding the dwarf lord, severing them at the elbow. Foul daemonic ichor spurted from the stumps, steaming as it struck the stone floor. The daemon howled, its cry reverberating through the souls of those who heard it. Only Rundin had the stamina to withstand that aethyric wail. Taking both axe and sword, he leapt upon the beast, driving the blades into its shoulders. The feathered wings went flopping away, shrivelling like burning parchment as they were detached from the daemon.

A fanged beak sprouted from Drogor’s face, stabbing forwards and piercing the dwarf’s breast. Defying the mortal wound, Rundin brought Azdrakghar shearing into the right side of the daemon’s neck. A moment later, Ifulvin cut into the left. Throwing the last of his vitality into his powerful arms, he forced the weapons across Drogor’s flesh.

As the daemon’s head rolled free from its body, Rundin collapsed. There was a fierce smile, an expression of terrible fulfilment on the dead dwarf’s face. In his last moments, he had known his death would be a worthy one. He had achieved what Morek promised him he would achieve: a name greater than Dragonslayer, a name that would blot out forever the stigma of the oathbreaker.

In life he had been Rundin Torbansonn. In death he was Rundin Daemonslayer.

Weary, wounded, shocked by his ordeal, Morgrim somehow found the strength to see to Morek. Fighting to maintain his own consciousness, he helped the runelord to his feet and led him away from the carnage within the ruins. As soon as they were in the courtyard, Morgrim’s hearthguard came rushing over to attend them. He was stunned that they had failed to hear the sounds of so fierce a fight, but supposed it had just been another example of the daemon’s powers at work.

As he let the guards take Morek from him, the runelord gripped Morgrim’s arm. ‘The attack,’ he said. ‘You will still attack?’

Morgrim shook his head. ‘Nothing can stop it any more,’ he said. ‘When they tried to tell us about their druchii, we would not listen. Why should they listen if we tell them of our daemon? No, the only way this can end is with victory. There is no other way to find peace now.’

Away to the north, the lights of Sith Rionnasc were a dull glow. Some of those lights belonged to the elgi within their city, waiting for the dawi to come rushing through their shattered walls. Many more would be the fires set by the dwarfs as they held their ground outside those walls. For two nights, the dawi had been stealing back to their camps, tending their fires and awaiting the dawn before making half-hearted thrusts against the city. Tonight, however, there would be no dwarfs in those camps, only the fires they’d left behind.

King Onkmarr of Barak Varr turned away from his view of the hated city. How many times had he voyaged there as a simple trader? How many times had he walked those streets listening to elgi lies and bartering for cheap elgi trinkets? Nothing the tall-ears did was substantial; nothing they built could withstand the test of time. He would prove that soon with Sith Rionnasc.

‘It is time,’ the king growled, patting the handle of his axe. Around him, his thanes and champions, all of them veterans of the Siege of Barak Varr, muttered their agreement. They would stand by Onkmarr in everything so long as it repaid the elgi for what had been inflicted against the sea hold.

‘Bring down Brynnoth’s Wrath!’ Guildmaster Strombak cried out. At the engineer’s command, throngs of dwarfs came rushing down the slopes of the hill. They were divided into gangs of twenty and thirty, each team labouring beneath the burden of a massive beam of wutroth or an enormous spool of rope and wire. Some struggled under the heft of immense mattocks and hammers, great adzes and spanners. A huge mob over a hundred strong drew a gigantic sledge down from the forest, a great platform of oak, from the centre of which an enormous stone head glowered at its surroundings.

‘Tromm,’ Onkmarr intoned, bowing as the head was dragged past him and towards the valley below. The head had belonged to a colossal statue of King Brynnoth that had been partially demolished by the elgi during the siege. Great care had been taken to bear the decapitated head from Barak Varr, especially when the tunnels of the Ungdrin Ankor grew too narrow to allow its passage and its journey had to continue overland. Difficult as that journey had been, the avengers of the sea hold had seen the ordeal through.

‘Now the old king will have his revenge,’ Strombak declared. ‘We will make the elves answer for the grudges of our people.’

Onkmarr stared past the sledge, looking down into the valley below. Eyes attuned to the darkness of the underground could easily spot Strombak’s engineers directing the dwarfs as they brought their strange burdens down to them. ‘The elgi will know what it is to lose their homes,’ he declared. ‘They will know the same horror our people felt when the great gates came crashing in.’ A grim chuckle rose from the king. ‘But they won’t know it for long.’ He looked over at his thanes. ‘You have set your warriors to guard against the elgi?’

‘Yes, my liege,’ one of the thanes replied, rapping his fist against his breast as he bowed. ‘But if the elves come at us in force, we may need help from Thane Morgrim’s army.’

‘We’ll suffer no help beyond what we’ve already been given,’ Onkmarr declared. Morgrim’s army had done the hard part, breaking down the walls. Elgidum had also tasked nearly every runelord and runesmith in his host with employing their magic against elgi divinations. That was all Onkmarr could ask of his fellow dawi. If there was going to be any honour for Barak Varr this night, then the rest of it must be left to them alone.

‘We are protected from their spells, but if one of their scouts should see us, then the plan could be thwarted before it begins,’ Strombak cautioned.

Onkmarr scowled at the master engineer. It was an argument they’d had many times. The need for haste balanced against the care and caution that was ingrained into the engineers’ guild. There was a place for prudence, but there was no time for it now. ‘Your guildbrothers must do their part,’ Onkmarr declared. ‘They must get the machine ready before the sun betrays us or the elgi find us. Everything hinges on that. If we miss our shot, then all of us deserve no better than to wander Gazul’s halls for eternity. We will have betrayed the trust and hope of our people. We will have failed our oaths to our ancestors and our gods!’

‘It will be as you say,’ a chastened Strombak said. He looked up anxiously at his liege. ‘You are determined to…’

Onkmarr slapped his hand against his axe. ‘It is the doom that has come for me. I would not cheat it for a lesser end.’

Strombak nodded. ‘Then I would stand beside you, my liege.’

Onkmarr smiled and clapped his hand on the engineer’s shoulder. Together they watched as the enormous machine began to take shape on the valley floor. Piece by piece, beam by beam, a colossal catapult was taking shape. It resembled a grudge thrower as much as a sword resembled a knife. The scale of the thing was nearly beyond compare, a cyclopean construction that strained the limits of dwarfish inventiveness and mechanics. Even Strombak was hard-pressed to understand all of the balances and counter-balances that allowed the weapon to function, the weights that would keep it from shaking itself apart when its titanic arm was loosed and it hurled its awful burden at the enemy.

By the standards of the dawi, the assembly of Brynnoth’s Wrath was reckless and frantic. The engineers would have preferred to have days to set each part into its place. Instead, they only had a few hours. When they were finished, however, they had erected a monster of oak and wutroth and steel that stood two hundred feet in height. The wood was stained a grey-black, blending into the darkness around it. As the workers dispersed back into the wooded hills, the crew of artillerists who would work the catapult marched up to it, their armour blackened with soot to avoid any betraying reflection.

The last gang of labourers loaded the great stone head from the sledge, rolling and sliding it into the gigantic basket at the end of the catapult’s arm. Once the scowling visage of King Brynnoth was set in place, the labourers turned and retreated to the heights.

‘It is time,’ Onkmarr said again, feeling the weight of his words press upon him. It was no easy thing to embrace one’s doom, but if it were easy then there wouldn’t be any honour to be had from it.

Onkmarr and Strombak strode down to the colossal catapult. The artillerists bowed as their king walked past them. ‘All is in readiness,’ their captain reported. He gestured to the notched wooden partitions that fronted the legs of the catapult and from which the artillerists had taken sightings and evaluated the direction and distance between themselves and their target. Everything had been calculated long before the catapult was erected; the artillerists had simply verified the range and that Brynnoth’s Wrath stood in the exact spot it had been designed to stand.

‘You can feel the anger of Barak Varr pulsing from Brynnoth’s head,’ Onkmarr said, pointing with his axe at the scowling effigy. The observation wasn’t entirely imagination. Potent and terrible runes had been carved into the head, the most powerful and malignant the runelords of Barak Varr dared to employ. The eldritch letters pulsed with a crimson light, throbbing as though in sympathy to some spectral heart.

‘The elgi give us reason enough for our rage,’ Strombak said. ‘They draw from us the very depths of hate and then demand even more.’

Onkmarr walked to the arm of the catapult. He glowered at the tautened chain that restrained the tensed arm. ‘They will demand nothing from anyone ever again,’ he said as he brought his axe shearing through the chain.

Despite all the precautions, Brynnoth’s Wrath rose up as the arm slapped against the crossbeam and lobbed the gigantic head down the valley. One of the artillerists was crushed as a counterbalance tore free and smashed down upon him. Another had his leg reduced to pulp as the lower part of the arm splintered and snapped back at him.

Onkmarr was oblivious to the hurts of his subjects, however. Seizing his spyglass from his belt, he dashed to one of the observation posts and fixed the scope at the victim he’d chosen for Brynnoth’s Wrath decades ago. He focused on the great dam the elgi had built across the river. An instant it stood there, vast and imposing. The next moment the stone head smashed into it. With a thunderous boom, the face of the dam was broken.

The runes of destruction carved into the stone erupted into ferocious, awful malignancy as the head struck. They conspired to magnify the impact a thousandfold. It was just possible the immense elgi dam could have withstood the crash of the stone by itself, but with the magical enhancement its demolition was assured.

Through the crimson flashes and whorls of the released rune magic, Onkmarr could see grand cracks snaking away across the face of the dam, rushing in every direction from the ugly crater the head had gouged into the meat of the structure. Streams of water spurted from the cracks, provoking still more fractures. On the wall above, in the little forts that guarded the dam, the elgi defenders could be seen rushing about in alarm and confusion. Onkmarr couldn’t make out their faces, but he could well imagine the horror written across them.

‘Now the elgi learn what it means when a dwarf takes revenge,’ Onkmarr hissed, clenching his hand tight about the spyglass.

Strombak and the engineers had reckoned the exact spot that Brynnoth’s Wrath would need to strike, the spot where the impact would be the most devastating. The spot where the pressure of the waters behind the dam would explode the compromised structure and bring the whole thing crashing down.

A vibrant roar of delight echoed from the hills as the dwarfs hidden there saw the distant dam break apart. Through the spyglass, Onkmarr could see the tiny figures of elves hurtling from the walls to be caught in the roaring cataract that had erupted from the shattered dam. A tidal wave of churning, rushing obliteration was spilling down the valley, roaring across the path the river had once taken before the elgi tried to chain it. The path that would lead back to the sea.

The path that would bring the flood smashing down upon Sith Rionnasc.

Onkmarr dropped the glass and turned to face Strombak. When they’d lobbed the head at the dam, they’d known they had invited death upon themselves. The engineers had timed the speed of the flood waters they expected to unleash with Brynnoth’s Wrath. Their conclusions had been sobering: the crew of the catapult wouldn’t have time to escape the deluge.

The king didn’t even try. With his death, he would wipe out an entire city of elgi. What greater feat could he aspire towards?

‘It is a good death, my liege,’ Strombak told him.

‘Aye, a grand death,’ Onkmarr replied.

The floodwaters slammed down upon Brynnoth’s Wrath, smashing the catapult to splinters and bearing its remains away with it towards the sea. Somewhere, in the boiling deluge, the corpses of Onkmarr and the others were borne away to the deeps.

The Anurein went sweeping through the countryside, uprooting forests and submerging hills as it ploughed its way towards the coast. The breadbasket of Elthin Arvan vanished beneath the deluge, the carefully cultivated soil washed out to sea, leaving behind a morass of silt and mud that would never again be anything more than a quagmire of marshes and fens.

Sith Rionnasc itself was obliterated by the floodwaters. Houses and shops simply disappeared. Sections of rubble from the walls were transformed into rolling, crashing, crushing juggernauts. The lofty towers toppled, their foundations shorn by the tide of debris. Many of the ships at anchor in the harbour were flooded, pitching to the bottom with all hands. Some few managed to ride out the assault, surviving to lend themselves to the rescue of those who’d been spared by the deluge.

From surrounding hills, the dwarfs were content to merely watch as the asur rowed out to drowned buildings and plucked wretched survivors from rooftops. They didn’t move to intercept the ships as they sailed out to sea, escorted by a pair of massive dragons. They didn’t do anything but wait until the floodwaters had receded and the ruins were exposed. Then and only then did they stir themselves. In a great troop they swarmed down into the ravaged port. With hammer and mattock they destroyed what remained, tearing the ruins down to their very foundations.

True to the promise they’d given their brethren in Barak Varr, when the dawi were finished there was almost no trace that Sith Rionnasc had ever existed.

The city had been erased from the world.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Return of the Phoenix King
596th year of the reign of Caledor II

The walls of Tor Alessi had become a symbol of the tenacity and arrogance of the elgi. Foremost of the elven settlements in Elthin Arvan, Tor Alessi surpassed them all in size and grandeur. Its opulence was shabby and crude by the refined standards of Ulthuan, but to those born in the colonies it was inspiring. They took heart from the concentric rings of walls running clear down into the harbour. They marvelled at the wide streets and their tiled intersections, at the ashwood lampposts with their bronze lanterns that lined every avenue. They wondered at the soaring majesty of the great towers with their white walls and golden domes. They gazed in astonishment at the enormity of Founders’ Square, the place where the asur had raised the very first stones of what would become a mighty city. An obelisk of red-veined marble stood proudly at the centre of that square, its shadow perfectly aligned with the sun to mark out the shifting seasons and the coming solstice. From the square, broad roads swept down to the always-busy harbour, where goods from Elthin Arvan were loaded onto ships bound for the ten kingdoms.

Again and again, the dawi had tried to smash their way through the barrier, only to be thrown back. Other elven settlements had been conquered and demolished. Athel Maraya was so much ash. Kor Vanaeth was overgrown ruins. The streets of Oeragor were smothered beneath desert sands. Athel Toralien was peopled only by rooks and rats. Sith Rionnasc was lost in the muck of marsh and fen. The dwarfs had evicted the colonists from most of their former holdings, but they knew that so long as Tor Alessi still stood, they could never claim any victory.

High King Gotrek felt the weight of his centuries like chains of iron bound tight about him. It seemed so long ago when he’d led his people to victory over the greenskins, when they’d at last driven the menace of urk and grobi from the realms of the Karaz Ankor. Such glory there had been, such a bright and shining future ahead of his people. But it hadn’t been anything more than a dream. Maybe from the first there had been no chance of peace with the elgi. Two peoples could be no more different than dwarf and elf. The dwarfs were slow and deliberate, gruff and direct in their manners, pragmatic in their thinking. To most dwarfs, the elves were never more than flighty, foppish hedonists who pampered themselves with luxury and decadence. It was inevitable that they would go to war with a race with which they had almost nothing in common. As much as he’d tried to encourage coexistence with the elgi, Gotrek wondered sometimes how much of the blame for this war rested on his own shoulders.

Certainly there had been forces at work to bring dwarf and elf into conflict. There were the stories of renegade elgi called druchii who bore responsibility for atrocities like the murder of Runelord Agrin Fireheart. Then there was the chilling account related to the High King by Morgrim and Morek, the report that Drogor Zarrdum had actually been some kind of daemon, an unholy beast exuding his poisonous influence to speed the war to ever greater heights of barbarity and atrocity. The lorekeepers of Karaz-a-Karak speculated that the daemon might have been the fiend Htarken, a loathsome lord vanquished by High King Snorri Whitebeard and the elf prince Malekith nearly two thousand years past. A daemon was never truly destroyed and with time its essence could return to perpetuate its evil upon the descendents of those who had foiled its schemes.

Daemon or druchii, neither were the cause of the war. All they might have done was fan the flames, but the spark had come from the elgi king himself. Gotrek felt his body tremble as a wave of absolute rage coursed through him. The arrogant contempt of Caledor II had brought all of this about. First there had been the disgraceful mutilation of Forek Grimbok and the rest of the ambassadors sent to Ulthuan. Then there had been the Phoenix King’s butchery of Prince Snorri. To have his son fall in battle would have been hurtful enough, but to have the body defiled by the elf king, to have his son’s spirit condemned to wander Gazul’s halls as a maimed thing, that was too great an insult to bear. True, wiser and more compassionate elgi had retrieved the ‘trophy’ their king took away and returned Snorri’s missing hand to the dawi, but the damage was done. There could never be any reconciliation between their peoples. Peace and coexistence weren’t even dreams now. They belonged to the world of fable and legend.

Gotrek stroked his long beard, feeling the little onyx beads as they slid across his leathery palm. For him, there would never be any peace. Not while the elgi king breathed.

The little spit of rock rising from the forest had become known as the ‘Long Watch’. For centuries dwarf rangers had maintained a presence here, living in the caves beneath the rock while using its summit to spy upon Tor Alessi. It had endured, sometimes with only a single ranger occupying it for years. The Long Watch, devoted to one grim and terrible purpose: to call the dawi to the final battle.

Gotrek climbed down the cunningly concealed steps that had been cut into the side of the rock. There was nothing else to be seen by studying the elgi city. What he wanted wasn’t there. Burying his disappointment under his stolid exterior, the High King joined his hearthguard waiting for him below. His thronebearers hurried forwards, straining beneath the weight of his stone chair. By long tradition, the High King could sit on no lesser seat than his Throne of Power. Whatever the obstacles and hardships, it was the honour of his thronebearers to always keep the ancient seat ready for him. Gotrek considered it a foolish custom, but even a king had to bow to the traditions of his people.

With a wave of his hand, Gotrek sent his thronebearers to precede him into the cave. The mammoth door was fashioned to mimic the rock around it and when closed, even a dwarf was unable to find any sign of its presence. The eyes of elgi, unused to the subtle differences exhibited by rock and stone, had never pierced the camouflage, nor had the spells of their mages, for the runesmiths had taken pains to inscribe potent symbols of concealment in the rock. The steps just within the entrance had been worked so that they seemed jagged and uneven, the product of nature rather than dwarfish pick and hammer. The cave beyond likewise betrayed no artificiality, but hidden in its deep shadows, shielded by stalagmites and stalactites, were tunnels that led down into vast vaults and chambers.

It was to one of these vaults that Gotrek and his entourage descended. Once past the outer cave, the tunnels lost their ruggedness. Great blocks of granite and limestone flanked the walls and ceiling while the floor was a smooth series of steps. The room at the end of the corridor was a great hall, its ceiling some fifty feet off the stone floor. Soaring pillars and archways supported the roof, the glowering visages of ancestors frowning down from the heights. Except for the lack of a hearth and a roaring fire, the hall wasn’t so dissimilar from the sort that might be found in Ekrund or Kraka Drak, or some of the more distant strongholds. There were many, of course, who still grumbled that it was an unfit residence for the High King, but Gotrek had no patience for those mutterings. When he came to Tor Alessi, he didn’t do so to be comfortable. He came to make war.

The thronebearers marched to the middle of the hall, hefting their burden to where a raised dais awaited them. Grunting, they lifted the throne up over their heads and set it back down again upon the platform. With a precision born of long practice, they withdrew the gilded poles from the sides of the pedestal beneath the seat, leaving it to stand on its own upon the dais.

Gotrek marched over and climbed the steps. Only when he was on his throne did he cast his gaze across the hall. A long table of wutroth, a relic salvaged from the rubble of Kazad Thar, stretched ahead of the dais and around it were gathered many kings and generals, drawn from every corner of the Karaz Ankor. The almost barbarous Norse dwarfs of Kraka Drak far to the north and the steely-eyed desert-dwellers from the lands beyond Ekrund sat beside the lords of Karak Izil in their silver-chased finery and the grim nobles of the Grey Mountains with their eagle-winged helms. Warchiefs from Karak Kadrin and Karak Ungor with their girdles of gold and their breastplates of gromril, commanders from Zhufbar proudly displaying jewels looted from vanquished elgi. Great or small, whatever matters they had been discussing had been forgotten when the High King entered the hall. One and all, they watched their king, waiting for him to speak.

Gotrek was silent for a long time. His eyes didn’t linger on the generals or his subject kings. He stared beyond them, out across the hall to the silken banner that hung on the wall. Torches set to either side of the standard made it stand out from the gloom around it. It had been captured in Athel Toralien, found in the ruins of its great palace. Captive elgi had identified it.

A great dragon and a fiery bird, entwined about one another, both beasts rendered in crimson against a white field. It was a standard that had been kept by the governor of Athel Toralien against the possibility of a royal visit. It was the heraldry of one elgi and one elgi alone. It was the personal device of King Caledor II and would be unfurled only when the Phoenix King was in residence.

Gotrek could feel his hate burning inside him as he stared at the standard of his son’s killer. How desperately he wanted to see those colours flying from the spires of Tor Alessi! It was what he’d commanded his rangers to watch for ever since Morgrim had brought the banner to him. It was what he’d dreamed about for decades, the message that the elgi king had returned to the Old World, had placed himself again within reach of the dawi.

By his own decree, Gotrek had allowed Tor Alessi to endure. The many sieges against the city had been half-hearted, probing attacks. They’d been staged to cover more important strikes elsewhere, such as Morgrim’s conquest of Athel Toralien, or been used to forestall any fresh campaign mounted by their enemy. The elgi could always be depended on to come running back anytime Tor Alessi was threatened. They knew if the city fell, there would be no rebuilding their lost colonies.

With each siege, the dawi had diverted some of their resources towards the future. Beneath the plains, far from where they could be discovered by the enemy, a network of tunnels had been excavated, underground storehouses and barracks constructed. Traps by the hundreds had been prepared, all waiting for the day when the High King would declare the final attack.

The very momentum of their successes elsewhere had become burdensome to Gotrek. With the elgi reeling at every turn, with their people fleeing out to sea or into the forests, the dawi were riding the tide of victory. Ever since the destruction of Sith Rionnasc, there had been voices calling for a total assault against Tor Alessi. Gotrek had tried to argue against these voices, tried to quieten them until such time as he could end the war his way, but with each year the effort had become more onerous. The kings argued that the war had been fought long enough, that they’d spent enough blood and treasure. There was no need to prolong it when a single attack against Tor Alessi could end it all.

Even now there were some strongholds that seemed to think the war was over. Barrak Varr had sent only the smallest contingent to join Gotrek’s throng. Karak Eight Peaks hadn’t come at all, King Varnuf keeping his warriors in his own lands with condescending talk of maintaining a ‘reserve’ should the High King’s plans go awry. Other holds, too, had offered their excuses. Everyone seemed to want Gotrek to capture the city, but none wanted to spend their own treasure and warriors to make it happen.

Turning his eyes from the elf standard, Gotrek studied the generals and kings who had come to join him. He knew he couldn’t afford to demur. If he was to maintain the cohesion of the Karaz Ankor and the authority of the High King, this attack had to succeed. He locked eyes with Morgrim, motioning for his nephew to stand.

‘Light fires to honour our dead and to draw the eyes of our ancestors,’ Gotrek said. ‘Call the grudge-keepers to reckon the accounts. We attack with the dawn. You, Morgrim Bargrum, will command my armies. Bring down the walls and let the elgi know that this time they will not escape vengeance.’

Morgrim Bargrum leaned against the craggy outcropping that topped the Long Watch and studied the elgi city stretching down to the sea.

The walls of Tor Alessi had changed since last Morgrim cast his eyes upon them. They’d been expanded, strengthened, rendered far more formidable than they had been in Imladrik’s day. It was only natural. After thirteen sieges, the elves had taken pains to prevent a repeat of what they’d suffered during each attack. Walls had been heightened to defy siege towers and ladders, thickened to thwart catapults and bolt throwers. Gates had been strengthened to withstand battering rams. Jagged blocks of stone had been strewn about the approaches to the gates to spoil the momentum of any wheeled engine being rushed against them. In several places, elaborate earthworks had been established to interrupt any rush by an enemy approaching the walls. He could see the bolt throwers and catapults standing atop the towers, the archers lined up along the battlements. Somewhere, he knew, the dragons would be waiting, probably in their eyries deep within the city proper. The drakk would be nesting in the tallest towers, waiting for their elgi masters to send them into battle. It was an endless source of disgust and disbelief to him that anyone could dwell with such monsters, could accept the presence of such beasts.

There would be the mages to worry about, too. The dawi had taken pains to keep their advance secret from the elgi, but never had they achieved the sort of surprise they’d accomplished when he’d led his warriors here against Prince Imladrik. Morgrim suspected that the elgi must have entire covens of mages whose only purpose was to use their sorcery to keep a watch for dwarfs advancing upon Tor Alessi.

He let his hand fall to the hilt of Ifulvin. Whatever the dangers, they had to bring an end to this war. The elgi were too proud to leave on their own. The dawi were too stubborn to accept anything less than victory. Even the High King wanted to prolong the war. Morgrim knew Gotrek didn’t care so much about conquering Tor Alessi and driving the elgi into the sea. He wanted the Phoenix King. Nothing less than the blood of Caledor II would satisfy him. All the campaigns, the capture of the other elgi cities, the decimation of elgi armies, all of it had been an effort to lure their king back to the Old World. None of it had worked. Now the High King’s hand had been forced by his own subjects – they wanted the war over.

At least Gotrek was king enough to recognise the fact. He’d entrusted command of his armies to Morgrim, leaving it to the Elgidum to take Tor Alessi. He knew Morgrim would fight without restraint, without the hope that they might yet draw the elgi king back.

Morgrim looked over the armoured hearthguard who surrounded him. Each dwarf held his warhammer across his shoulders. Some of these warriors had been there from the very first, fighting with Prince Snorri at Angaz Baragdum. Old Khazagrim bore Morgrim’s standard. Too old to wield hammer or axe, much less lead the hearthguard, the grizzled ancient had almost begged for the honour of carrying Morgrim’s banner. Khazagrim had been the last dawi to cross blades with the elgi king, chasing Caledor off the field of battle after Snorri was cut down. His failure to take the elgi king’s head that day was a burden that had crushed him, aged him beyond his years. It was a terrible thing for any dwarf to live with such a burden of shame.

Thoughts of shame drew Morgrim’s eye away from his hearthguard. Most of the dwarf regiments were forming into ranks in the shelter of the trees, where they would be safe from watchers on Tor Alessi’s walls. There was a distance of some two miles between the forest and the outermost wall, open ground that was devoid of any manner of cover. A killing field the elves had prepared long ago to receive the next wave of dwarfs to come against them. There wasn’t so much as a stand of tall grass to provide an enemy with cover but that was of no concern to one group of dwarfs, who deliberately strayed out onto the field. They stood out at the edge of the woods, howling and jeering at the elves on the walls. From time to time an arrow would whistle out, usually falling well shy of the shouting dwarfs. Occasionally one would strike true, stabbing into naked flesh. In response, the stricken dwarf, unless mortally injured, would simply rip the shaft from his body and wave the broken arrow at his attackers in a fresh bout of bawdy derision.

There were thirty of them, drawn from across the Karaz Ankor. In appearance, they sought the same savage aspect as that of Rundin Daemonslayer. They wore little beyond their tattoos and chains, their hair dyed a bright crimson and shaved into a tall cockscomb. Those with beards wore them plaited and festooned with tiny runestones and golden talismans. Among them, however, were three who had no beards. Their faces were scarred and horrendously disfigured, only the odd tuft of hair sprouting from the wrecked skin. They were the last of the steelbeards, the survivors of the disgraced delegation to Ulthuan. Most of them had perished over the course of the war, but these three had persisted, driven on by their need to atone for the shame that had been inflicted upon them.

It was Forek who led them now. The former reckoner had spent years in defiance of Morgrim’s command, hunting the refugees of Athel Toralien in the forests. By circumstances the steelbeard never explained, the warriors he’d led were wiped out. Only he had escaped and when he learned of Rundin’s death it had unbalanced his mind. He’d gone away, wandering the mountains for a decade before one day appearing at Karak Kadrin. He’d walked to the shrine of Grimnir and in the sight of the astonished priests had stripped off his mask and armour, shaving his head while making dire oaths before the ancestor god. Then he’d left again, as suddenly as he’d appeared. Stories filtered back about a crazed, beardless dwarf fighting trolls in the high passes, challenging beasts and greenskins wherever he found them and whatever the odds. Forek Grimbok soon came to be known by a new name: Forek Trollslayer.

Morgrim knew the reckoner was seeking the same prize that had drawn Rundin from battle to battle: a noble death that would efface his shame. When he heard that Forek had challenged and destroyed the giant Yvnir near Kraka Drak, he was certain of it. No amount of reassurance from himself or even from his sister Elmendrin could sway him from his suicidal purpose. Other dwarfs, labouring under similar feelings of guilt, made the journey to Karak Kadrin and followed Forek’s example, shaving their heads and taking up what was now called the ‘Slayer’s oath’ – to wash away their shame by seeking a heroic death.

The Slayers were fierce fighters, but undisciplined. Morgrim had been tempted to refuse them a position in the battle line. It wasn’t possible to depend on warriors already committed to dying to hold ground or occupy a position. Other fighters might be put in jeopardy if the Slayers charged off and left a flank exposed. In the end, though, he simply didn’t have the heart to deny them. They’d suffered so much already, it would take a soul more callous than his own to reject them a place in the battle. He would simply have to make allowances for them and ensure those who fought beside them had reserves ready to support them if the Slayers proved unreliable.

‘Why did we have to come to this?’ Morgrim said as he watched the Slayers turn their arses to the walls of Tor Alessi, daring the archers to loose another volley.

‘He blames himself for the dawi he lost in the forest.’ Morek Furrowbrow leaned against his runestaff, his head cocked to one side as he spoke to Morgrim. Ever since the fight against Htarken, the runelord’s body had become increasingly twisted, as though his spine were trying to inch its way around to his belly. Every year his shoulders became less even, and one arm was notably shorter than the other. Morek had grimly stated his own prognosis, that because he was attuned to magic the daemon’s corruption had been able to taint his body. How many years it would take before he was completely crippled, Morek wasn’t able to judge, but he wanted to find a different death for himself if he could.

‘We’ve all lost dawi who were following our orders,’ Morgrim said. Grungni only knew how many dwarfs had died under his command throughout the war. It was something that would snap any dwarf’s mind if he allowed himself to dwell upon it.

Morek’s head twitched, the closest he could manage to a sidewise motion. ‘Forek confided to me that he let himself be goaded into pursuing the elgi from Athel Toralien by “Drogor”. He’d become great friends with Rundin during their days under Brok Stonefist. They’d argued when they last fought together and to find his friend dead was a terrible shock to Forek. To find him dead at the hands of the daemon whose advice he’d taken was simply too much guilt for him to accept.’

‘Now he seeks a hero’s death,’ Morgrim sighed. ‘Haven’t we lost enough heroes already? What is to be gained by dying?’

The runelord’s answer came in a whisper, a whisper laden with piteous longing.

‘Peace.’

In blocks of armoured warriors thousands strong, the dwarfs came marching out from the trees. The archers on the walls knew the range of the plain outside the city down to the last yard. There was none of the frustration and broken discipline that had caused a few of them to loose arrows at the Slayers. Captains and sergeants prowled the battlements, coldly warning their soldiers to hold back. Upon the towers, signalmen observed the advance, displaying flags as the enemy marched closer and closer.

The goal was simple enough – to draw the dwarfs well within range of the archers before loosing the first volley. The deeper the enemy was allowed to proceed within that kill zone, the more casualties the elves could hope to inflict. Once the dwarfs broke, they would have to retreat with elven arrows pursuing them every step of the way. The trick and the danger lay in deciding how close was too close. If the dwarfs were allowed to gain too much ground, they might be able to threaten the walls.

From the lofty vantage of the Tower of the Dragon, Thoriol could see the dawi creeping ever closer. The woods seemed to pulse with eerie life as the trees began to sway, then pitch and fall. With rapid strokes, the dwarfs were cutting paths through the forest from the hills beyond, felling trees that must have already been weakened and prepared weeks before. Through these paths, great war machines were rolled towards the city: battering rams, catapults, bolt throwers and siege towers. It was an amazing sight, watching the way the dwarfs cleared the obstacles and brought their weapons forwards. He was reminded once again of his father’s warnings about underestimating the dawi race. By elven standards they were uncouth and crude, but it was a grave mistake to ever belittle their industry or determination.

Like lambs to the slaughter, Draukhain hissed in Thoriol’s mind. Their determination is that of a frightened rabbit who runs into the jaws of the fox.

From his saddle, Thoriol stroked the dragon’s scaly neck. It still amazed him how the reptile’s body could feel both cold and hot at the same time. ‘They know we are here, but I don’t think they marched all the way from their mountains just to burn in your fire.’

That is their doom just the same. Look, you can see the killer’s standard down there. He is proud of what he’s done. It would be easy to make him swallow that pride. Before I swallow him.

The dragon’s rage flowed through Thoriol’s veins. He felt the drake’s confidence, its ancient contempt for all the little creatures and lesser breeds. It was more than flesh and bone – it was elemental force unleashed. The dwarfs could no more stop it than they could a meteor. It would descend upon them and wreak such havoc that they’d never dare stick their heads from their holes again. It could take up his father’s killer and squeeze the life out of him, feel it drip drop by drop through its claws.

Thoriol fought to regain his control. ‘Not until the order is given,’ he cautioned Draukhain. ‘Not until Lord Eylrk gives the command.’

The latest of Menlaeth’s generals, Draukhain snorted with contempt. He cares nothing for justice, only for the glory he can win for himself here. How long before he too is called away in disgrace? We can leap down and claim our own from the dwarfs. That is the only glory you and I desire!

The dragon’s urgings appealed to the pain and hollowness inside him. Thoriol would have liked nothing better than to submit. Avenge his father and then he could go home.

It was his sense of duty and obligation that made him hold back. He couldn’t let himself bring disgrace to House Tor Caled, to the memory of his father. He couldn’t let the people of Tor Alessi believe he was less valorous than Ilendril and his enslaved creatures. Thoriol was surprised by the sense of embarrassment such thoughts provoked in Draukhain. The dragon understood that there was more to honouring Imladrik than avenging his death. It was ashamed to have forgotten that.

Without Draukhain urging him to the attack, Thoriol was able to focus on the tactical situation as it unfolded. So many centuries on the battlefield had given him more than a cursory appreciation of strategy. Looking down on the dwarfs he was confused at what he saw. He’d seen the craft and care with which Morgrim had deployed his forces at Sith Rionnasc. What he saw now seemed as subtle as one of the dwarfs’ hammers. They advanced in great blocks, staggered like checks on a gameboard. The foremost regiments were heavily armoured with great shields; those following behind were arrayed in coats of mail and bore an assortment of ladders along with their weaponry. It seemed as if the armoured vanguard were there to cover the warriors following behind while they raised ladders against the walls.

It was an obvious deception. If the dwarfs meant to force the walls, they would use their towers, not climb ladders that left them exposed to arrows. There had been no barrage to soften the defences, no effort to use smoke to blind the bowmen, no concentration of crossbows to keep the elves from pushing back the ladders as soon as they were raised. No, this wasn’t an attack, it was a feint, but no matter how hard he looked, Thoriol couldn’t see the purpose behind the deception.

The archers held their arrows with exemplary discipline. Thoriol had stood where they now stood and he knew first-hand the strain of waiting for the command to loose, the fortitude it took to wait for the fighting to begin. Closer and closer the dwarfs came. At three hundred yards they hesitated, crying out in their gruff voices ‘Khazuk! Khazuk!’ before resuming their fearsome march. The captains on the walls were looking anxiously at the signalmen, watching for the command to strike the enemy.

It wasn’t until the enemy was one hundred and fifty yards from the walls that the command was issued. The voices of the captains rang out sharply from every quarter of the outer wall. In response, archers stepped out from behind the embrasures and shot down into the dwarfish ranks. From the plain behind the walls, the massed ranks of bowmen deployed there arced a volley up and over the fortification, sending a rain of steel-tipped death showering down upon the dawi.

Thick armour prevented most of the volley from striking true, but as the dwarfs raised their shields to defend themselves from the arrows dropping down on them from above they left themselves exposed to the sharpshooters on the walls ahead. Taking direct aim at the enemy, the archers took their toll, skewering throats and transfixing eyes with expert aim. Mangonels and bolt throwers shuddered into action, hurling boulders and shooting spears into the massed enemy.

The barrage continued for several minutes before the dwarfs broke. First one regiment, then another turned to flee back across the field. Deep within range of the archers, they’d be vulnerable to attack to a distance of three hundred yards from the wall and a further two hundred yards before the sharpshooters on the walls couldn’t reach them with any degree of accuracy. Scores of dwarf dead littered the ground around the walls and many more lay strewn in the wake of the retreating dawi, like the trail of some steel slug.

Another signal flag was raised, one that bore the device of a dragon rampant. Fierce roars shook the streets of Tor Alessi. From the spire of the Tower of the Sea, a great green-scaled wyrm rose into the sky and went soaring towards the fray. Rising from the Tower of the Winds was Malok, Lord Ilendril seated upon the red-scaled brute’s back. These two were the last of Ilendril’s wyrms, the others having turned on their masters or fallen in battle over the years since Sith Rionnasc. It was either a testament to Ilendril’s hubris or the desperation of the colonies that his wyrms were still being pressed into service.

Thoriol waited only a heartbeat before urging Draukhain into the air. As they rose there sounded a woeful cry from the dwarfish ranks, a groan of despair as they saw the dragons take wing. That was only right. Let the dawi feel the terror of imminent death – let them curse the vanity that had made them march here to cross blades with the asur.

Ilendril’s wyrms were already diving upon the retreating dwarfs. As they drew near, the volleys of arrows stopped, the artillery from the walls went quiet. The elves wanted to allow the dragons a clear field in which to operate.

The two wyrms spat fire onto the dwarfs, immolating scores of them in their first pass. They swung back around to make a second run. Thoriol noticed something in that moment, something that made him scream a warning to Draukhain. The blue dragon pulled back, climbing instead of joining the wyrms in their dive. So it was that he escaped the trap as it was sprung.

The advance and retreat of the dwarfs had been a ruse to draw out the dragons. For centuries the dawi had been making their preparations, preparing their traps. Right under the noses of the asur, their miners and engineers had been at work, burrowing beneath the plain, digging their tunnels in secret, hollowing out the earth below and constructing their fiendish weapons.

As the two wyrms swept down upon the dwarfs, the earth erupted. Great iron poles, long hidden underground, now sprang upwards, slicing through the layers of dirt that concealed them. Between each set of poles was a steel net. Dwarfs were old hands at snaring bats by laying nets across the mouths of caves. Now they applied the same tactics to catching dragons.

The two wyrms crashed into the nets, their wings becoming snared and dragging them down. As soon as they crashed to earth, the seemingly routed dwarfs turned. Screaming their war-cries they rushed at the fallen drakes. A blast of fire from Malok forced the dwarfs away as it used its claws to shred the confining net. The green drake wasn’t so fortunate. Its anguished wails rang out as hundreds of dwarfs chopped at it with axes and picks. The elf rider was ripped from his saddle, his head pulped beneath a warhammer.

It was like watching ants devour a lion. Sharing Draukhain’s disgust and fury, Thoriol offered no objection when the dragon dived down upon the dwarfs swarming over the green wyrm. The drake’s flames consumed a hundred dwarfs in the first blast, sending them screaming, rolling and writhing on the ground in blazing heaps of agony. Draukhain landed among its victims, crushing dozens beneath its claws. Its great tail flashed out, swatting another score of dwarfs, hurling them into the trees. With a seething roar the dragon sent another gout of fire searing across the dawi warriors, burning down another score of the bearded foe.

The green wyrm thrashed about in its bindings, but it was clear the reptile was mortally wounded. Draukhain clamped its jaws around the creature’s neck, breaking it with a powerful twist and ending the wyrm’s suffering. Then it reared up, spewing more fire at the dwarfs still lingering around the trap.

Thoriol saw that Malok was back in the air, Ilendril urging the wyrm towards the walls. He urged Draukhain to do the same, but even as the drake started to respond, he saw something that riveted his attention. The standard of Morgrim. The dwarf hero’s standard was close to where Malok had been trapped. Nearby… nearby stood the murdering dawi himself!

‘He’s here!’ Thoriol snarled. Draukhain roared in reply. The dragon used its wings not to rise into the air but simply to propel itself across the field in a set of soaring leaps. The ground shuddered beneath the reptile’s feet as it lunged at the dwarf.

Before they could close upon Morgrim, something shot out from the trees. As Draukhain howled in pain, Thoriol appreciated how cleverly the enemy had laid their trap. The display of bringing up their siege weapons had been ostentatious, meant to gull the elves into thinking the dwarfs had nothing heavier than crossbows and axes at hand. Nestled among the trees, trained upon those concealed nets, the dwarfs had already deployed several bolt throwers. The dwarfs had swarmed the green wyrm before the bolt throwers could be employed and Malok had escaped too soon. Draukhain, however, in its charge, had become easy prey.

The bolt slammed into the dragon’s side. The dwarfs had had centuries to engineer weapons specifically designed to kill such monsters. The one that speared Draukhain had a cruel double-head, making it impossible for the dragon to pull free or tear loose without ripping its wound wide open. Vicious runes engraved upon the bolt’s head caused it to penetrate thick scales as though they were made of parchment. Other runes sent pulses of eldritch pain rushing through the dragon’s body, burning a creature who dwelled amidst volcanoes.

Draukhain’s last leap became a graceless crash. The dragon slammed down upon its side, breaking its left wing. Its weight gouged a deep trench until the creature intersected one of the hidden dwarf tunnels. Partially sinking into the now exposed fissure, Draukhain came to rest, roaring in pain and bleeding profusely from its wound.

Thoriol was almost overcome by the sympathetic pain he shared with the dragon. It took all of his strength to loosen the straps of his saddle and free himself. He nearly pitched headlong into the tunnel, where angry dwarf miners shook their fists and hurled rocks up at him. Taking a firm hold of Draukhain’s neck, he pulled himself up onto the dragon’s shoulder.

His head still ringing from the disastrous descent, Thoriol barely saw the crazed, half-naked dwarf who charged across the field until the maniac had nearly reached Draukhain. It didn’t take much awareness to guess what the dwarf intended to do with his upraised axe.

Shouting his own war-cry, Thoriol leapt down and intercepted the dwarf. Seeing the enemy up close, he found him to be a grim specimen indeed, with shaved head and scarred face. He thought of the beardless dwarf Liandra had spared, the ambassador Forek Grimbok who’d been disfigured by the king.

Whatever sympathy she’d shown the beardless dwarf, Thoriol knew he couldn’t do the same. Charging at the Slayer, he brought his sword flashing out at him, slicing a shallow cut across his arm.

The Slayer turned, glaring at him with crazed eyes. He snarled something in Khazalid, punctuating the remark with a blob of bloody spittle. Then, the dwarf’s fury was fully refocused against Thoriol.

In all his years, the elf prince had never encountered such a foe. The Slayer would fearlessly throw himself at Thoriol, accepting the cuts and gashes inflicted by his sword so long as he could bring his axe swinging around. It took all of his agility to avoid those sweeps of the axe. Once, when it glanced across his armour, he saw the mail split and shear away. What such a murderous weapon could do to flesh and bone was something he didn’t want to learn.

Bleeding from a dozen wounds, the Slayer kept up his attack. One of Thoriol’s slashes split the dwarf’s nose and opened his jaw, yet the crazed foe paid his mutilation less notice than a stubbed toe. Spitting teeth and blood, he pressed his assault, and had the satisfaction of connecting with the elf’s side.

It was a glancing blow. By rights it should never have penetrated Thoriol’s armour, no matter how strong the dwarf himself might be. But whatever hideous enchantment empowered the axe made it slash through his mail and sink deep into his body. It felt like a lance of fire pressing against his ribs, the flash of pain almost blinding him.

The Slayer had no opportunity to press his attack. As he ripped his axe free and prepared to strike again, Thoriol thrust at him with his sword. The blade he had been given by his father, the sword Caledor had claimed was unfit for a prince of Tor Caled, split the dwarf’s beardless face, punching through flesh and bone until it exploded from the back of his skull.

The Slayer crumpled, the terrible axe falling from his numbed hands. The light behind those crazed eyes faded.

Thoriol clamped one hand against his bleeding side and staggered over to rip his blade free from the Slayer. As he did so, a gruff voice called out to him in Eltharin.

‘That is my friend you’ve killed, elf!’

Thoriol turned. Through the pain, he managed to focus upon the dwarf who cried out to him. For an instant, hate blotted out all sensation of pain. His accoster was Morgrim Elfdoom himself. Attended only by a wizened runelord and his standard bearer, the great hero of the dawi was almost within reach of Thoriol’s blade.

Thoriol’s eyes narrowed as he saw the sword thrust beneath Morgrim’s belt. How many times had he seen that blade? The mud-eater hadn’t just killed his father, he’d taken his sword for a trophy.

Pointing at the sword in Morgrim’s belt, Thoriol snarled at his enemy. ‘That is my father you killed, dawi.’ He managed one staggering step before the pain of his wound brought him crashing onto his face. Then all was blackness.

Morgrim stared in astonishment at the elf as he collapsed. Was it possible that this truly was Imladrik’s son? Part of him sneered at the idea. What did it matter if he was? He’d killed Forek, cut him down before Morgrim’s very eyes. He was an elgi, one of their dragon riders, friend and companion of the drakk. He was vermin, just like the wyrms, and just like the wyrms he deserved no mercy.

Just as he started towards Thoriol, Morek cried out in warning. A nimbus of protective magic flared up around him as the runelord evoked some conjuration. The blast of fire that swept around him in the next moment made Morgrim’s skin blister and singed the hair of his beard, but otherwise rendered him no harm. When the flames abated enough that he could see, the thane found that the blue-scaled dragon was standing between him and the injured prince.

‘Draukhain,’ Morgrim muttered, recalling the monster’s name. Long ago he’d nearly ridden upon this beast, when invited to accompany Imladrik to Karaz-a-Karak. Long ago he’d spared this beast’s life in the ruins of Oeragor, allowing it to bear Imladrik’s body back to his people.

There could be no such compassion for the creature now. It had become a scourge to his people, preying on them as the Crawling Death. Even the merciless Malok was second to this drakk in the grudges levelled against it.

The dragon answered Morgrim with a low hiss. The reptile was wounded, both from the bolt and from its fall. It still carried the scars of Oeragor upon it. Yet even with all its injuries, it was still powerful enough to kill Morgrim almost without a thought.

Azdrakghar seemed to twist in Morgrim’s hands, pulsating with excitement. The thane recalled his enraged oath during another attack against Tor Alessi, swearing vengeance upon Draukhain for its part in massacring his army. That oath had awoken the runes of his axe – the axe originally crafted for Prince Snorri Halfhand.

Now he would fulfil the weapon’s purpose. It had been crafted for a Dragonslayer, yet for all the enemies it had claimed, no dragon blood had yet crossed the blade.

Draukhain reared back, spitting another gout of fire at Morgrim as he rushed the beast. Once more, Morek’s magic preserved the thane, fending off the worst of the drakk’s ire. Bulling through the incendiary blast, he brought Azdrakghar swinging out. The blade cracked against the dragon’s snout, shearing through its jaw and sending ripples of crackling magic sizzling through the monster’s face.

The dragon lurched back in both shock and pain. Before it could recover, Morgrim slashed at the exposed breast, cleaving a great gash across the beast’s chest. Draukhain’s claw came slamming down, nearly crushing the dwarf flat. Morgrim threw himself to one side. As he rolled across the ground, he delivered a back-handed cut that almost cleft through one of the drakk’s claws.

Beast and dwarf glared at each other. The warning cry of Khazagrim alerted the thane just before the dragon’s tail came slamming down. Morgrim replied by chopping at the tail, shearing it through and leaving a six-foot length of flesh writhing on the ground.

Draukhain came at him again, snapping at him with its jaws. The fangs missed Morgrim by inches and he felt the dragon’s foetid breath wash over him. Again he lashed out with Azdrakghar, this time ripping open the brute’s face and splitting several of its teeth in half. The dragon recoiled and brought its uninjured wing slamming down. Morgrim was knocked flat by the blow. For a hideous instant the leathery pinion settled over him like a shroud. He felt himself being smothered under the musky reek of the reptile.

Twisting the axe around in his hand, Morgrim pressed the blade against Draukhain’s wing, slicing it down the membrane. The dragon raised its wing, bellowing in pain. As it did so, Morgrim was dragged up with it, his axe catching in one of the bones. He worried his weapon free, dropping down onto the creature’s scaly back. Before the dragon was fully aware of his presence, Morgrim braced his legs and brought Azdrakghar down.

The blade crunched into the top of Draukhain’s skull, just ahead of the dragon’s horns. A froth of blood and tissue boiled up from the wound. The beast bucked and started to rear, but Morgrim brought his axe chopping down again. This time the reptile’s legs went limp and it slammed back to the ground. Morgrim lost his footing, but managed to keep hold of the drakk’s horn. Bracing himself again, he brought the axe slamming home for a third time. Now he could see the slime of the beast’s brain clinging to the end of his blade. A terrible shudder swept through the beast. Except for the nervous twitches and writhing of its mangled bulk, the dragon was motionless. All purpose and motivation had fled from it with that last blow.

Morgrim had earned the title Snorri Halfhand had believed would be his and which had driven him to such a tragic end. Morgrim Bargrum had become the Dragonslayer.

Strangely, he didn’t feel any sense of triumph as he dropped down from Draukhain’s body. All he felt was a terrible weariness and an urge to wash the blood from his body. If the drakk hadn’t been half dead when he fought it, Morgrim knew which of them would have prevailed.

Stumbling from his own wounds, Morgrim allowed Khazagrim to help him from the field. Before he returned to his own lines, however, he paused and pointed at Thoriol. ‘Bind the elgi’s wounds,’ he ordered Morek. ‘Stop the bleeding and send him back to his people.’ He hesitated, then removed Ifulvin from his belt.

‘Send this with him,’ Morgrim said. ‘Let him know I too remember his father.’

‘The Council of Princes doesn’t rule Ulthuan – the king does. And I am king!’ Caledor’s outburst rang through his throne room like a peal of thunder. Only a few of the king’s closest confidants were present, those he felt he could depend upon for their devotion and loyalty.

Caradryel felt himself to be in strange company indeed. He felt like a lamb among wolves, waiting to be snapped up at any moment. Why the king had summoned him to this meeting was a mystery. It was no great secret that he was in service to Lady Yethanial, and he was certain that his patron’s views of Caledor and his rule were no secret to the king. When Thoriol had been present at court, Caradryel’s presence there had made sense. Now, he could only speculate why the king would want him around, and his speculations weren’t venturing into comfortable territories.

Hulviar, the loyal seneschal, was the first to find his voice. ‘There has been discord among the Council of Princes ever since Yverian was recalled from Elthin Arvan.’

Caledor glared from his throne. ‘Is it my fault that he proved an incompetent commander? Is it my responsibility that he chose to fall on his sword rather than face up to his failures?’

Caradryel was careful to hide his own feelings on the matter. The king had dispatched a seemingly endless succession of generals to the colonies, commanders who had been chosen for their rank and position among the noble houses rather than their tactical capabilities. While such a strategy kept the best generals available for the campaign in Naggaroth, it also meant that the commanders sent to the colonies were ill-prepared for their duties. When they failed, when the asur suffered some new defeat, the king would recall them to Ulthuan in disgrace, a policy that was embittering the great houses. By trying to play up to his supporters, by sending their favoured sons and daughters to win fame and glory against the dwarfs, Caledor had instead fomented resentment and distrust. At every turn, the king was pushing more and more of the nobility away from him. Voices like those of Yethanial and Athinol weren’t alone in questioning the king now. There had even been whispers that the king should abdicate in favour of his nephew.

The king had to be aware of the rebellious sentiment that was growing among the ten kingdoms. Yet still he persisted in flaunting his authority and acting in defiance of every council and advisor.

‘My liege, caution is not cowardice,’ Caradryel offered.

Caledor smiled at Caradryel. It was a smile devoid of anything approaching warmth. ‘Did I ask your opinion on the matter?’ the king snapped. He leaned from his throne, waving his hand at a great tapestry hanging upon the wall. The tapestry displayed the lands known to the asur, each settlement and colony cleanly depicted. Ugly splotches denoted the lands the dwarfs had seized. The defacement was deliberate, a sight to provoke revulsion in anyone studying the map. At a glance, the observer could share his king’s displeasure.

‘The druchii are finished,’ Caledor declared. ‘What is left in Naggaroth are a few pathetic holdouts. We have the core of our strength out there chasing shadows, defending the coasts from raiders who will never come again.’ He snapped his fingers at Hulviar. ‘When was the last raid against Tiranoc?’

‘Three hundred and twenty years ago, my liege,’ the seneschal replied.

Caledor turned from the map, shaking his fist in disgust. ‘The druchii are finished! It’s nothing but a rat hunt now. The only reason the Council of Princes is displeased is because each of them wants the glory of being the one to bring Malekith’s head back on a pike. I’ll not see the whole of my kingdom threatened by their vanity.’

Caradryel could have told the king several things about whose vanity was threatening the kingdom, but again he kept his thoughts to himself. What he’d already heard was enough to alarm anyone, much less the Council of Princes. The armies were being withdrawn from Naggaroth, leaving only a few scattered garrisons to prosecute the ‘rat hunt’ as the king called it. The rest were being drawn into a royal expedition to the colonies.

But the king wasn’t stopping at simply recalling his army from Naggaroth, he was levying troops from Ulthuan as well. Caledor intended to gather the largest force ever seen in the ten kingdoms, a fleet and an army so enormous that its mere arrival in Elthin Arvan would have the dwarfs suing for peace. The mud-diggers would learn who was superior when they saw the true strength of the asur.

‘My liege, perhaps it would be wise to offer the Council of Princes something to appease them,’ Caradryel suggested. ‘Maybe only take the forces from Naggaroth on your expedition…’

‘That is out of the question,’ Caledor said, giving a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘I will need every sword and bow to impress upon the mud-eaters the hopelessness of defying me. With the drakes refusing to participate, I must build the strength of my army with asur steel and ithilmar.’ A crafty gleam shone in his eyes as he leaned forwards and stared at Caradryel. ‘You are right, however. I am going to offer something that should appease my detractors and keep them quiet until I return.’ He pointed at the diplomat. ‘I am going to appoint you as my steward while I am gone.’

There weren’t many things in the realm of politics that could take Caradryel by surprise, but the king’s proclamation was one. He stared dumbfounded at Caledor. He glanced over at Hulviar, knowing that the king’s seneschal should be steward while the king was gone. There was resentment in Hulviar’s expression, but no real surprise. Clearly he’d known about this decision for some time.

‘I… I am not certain I am equal to such responsibility…’ Caradryel began.

‘Then make yourself equal,’ Caledor said. ‘I know how little affection you or your mistress bear towards me, but I know you are both loyal to House Tor Caled. I can trust you to protect my throne while I am gone because you will want to keep it safe for my heir.’

The king’s expression suddenly darkened. He sank back in his seat, his fingers tapping against the jewelled arms. ‘I have received a report from Tor Alessi. The dwarfs are attacking again. That is hardly news. What is news is the fact that Prince Thoriol has been gravely injured by the mud-diggers. The best healers in the colonies are trying to keep him alive.

‘Thoriol is my heir, the one who will wear the Phoenix Crown after me. He is my legacy, the legacy of Tor Caled.’ Caledor clenched his fists. ‘I will not have the blood of Caledor Dragontamer extinguished by a gaggle of bearded savages. If I must bring every asur in Ulthuan against them, I will do so!’

‘Then you intend to lead the army yourself?’ Caradryel asked, still reeling from the news that Thoriol was wounded and possibly dying.

Caledor smiled, somehow making the expression even colder than before. ‘I killed their prince – it should be no great ordeal to kill their king as well. I’ll return to Lothern with my nephew and their king’s head on a platter. Then we shall have peace in the ten kingdoms and in Elthin Arvan.’

Caradryel wondered if the king would have such confidence if he had any idea how strong the dawi truly were; if he’d seen the forces Caradryel had seen, and if he understood how many more dwarfs there were in the mountains.

‘I shall do honour to the trust you have placed in me,’ Caradryel announced. ‘I will safeguard the Phoenix Crown until your return, my liege.’

A sharp laugh rose from the king. ‘The crown? There will be no need of that. I shall take it with me. When I lead my armies into battle against the mud-eaters, I will wear the crown over my helmet. How else will the vermin know that they have the honour of dying upon the sword of a king?’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Battle of Three Towers
597th year of the reign of Caledor II

The outer wall of Tor Alessi had been reared after the seventh siege against the city. Built on a colossal scale, the fortification was fifty feet thick at its base and stood one hundred and fifty feet off the ground. Running across the plains in a semi-circle, the wall was anchored at either end by the pounding waves of the sea. Every three hundred yards of its three-mile length, a broad tower rose, its covered roof harbouring deadly eagle claw bolt throwers and cauldrons of molten lead to spill down upon attackers. Between each of the towers, ramparts with stone crenellations stretched, affording hundreds of archers protection as they loosed arrows at the enemy.

For a further six sieges, the outer walls had held and prevented all but the most minor harm to the city they defended. Now, with the fourteenth siege against Tor Alessi, they found themselves outmatched.

Grudge throwers cast tonnes of stone over the outer wall of Tor Alessi, soaring across the empty plain beyond to smash sections of the older inner wall that surrounded the city proper. Smaller catapults had to be content with battering the defences of the outer wall itself, collapsing the parapets and obliterating the battlements, sending the elven defenders scurrying into the shelter of the guard towers. One of these towers had been reduced to a heap of shattered stone, its rubble laying strewn in all directions. The rubble itself was too extensive to afford the dwarfs an easy way past the barrier, but at least the bolt throwers housed in the fortification had been silenced.

Yard by yard, the dwarfs were making progress, though the elves couldn’t see it. Runesmiths and runelords lent their magic to hiding that secret from enemy mages while the utmost care was taken to conceal the advance from more mundane scouts and spies.

Years ago the dwarfs had started their tunnels, reaching out to undermine the outer wall. The elves had learned to take precautions against such tactics, placing enchantments upon the foundations that would scorch any sappers before they could get close enough to undermine the walls. It was an obstacle the dwarfs had learned about only through the most devastating losses, but nothing could stand between a determined dawi and his objective.

Instead of digging close to the foundations, the miners had excavated forty feet beneath them, well past the enchantments, creating a great underground corridor running just ahead of the wall. At intervals of every ten yards, a little notch had been dug into the side of that corridor, and into each notch had been set a great steel spike twenty feet long and five feet wide. Placed at an angle, the spikes were aimed up at the wall. Charges of zonzharr lit behind the spikes would drive them upwards, skewering the walls from below. A further charge placed within each hollowed-out spike would then explode the barrier from within. When every sapper was in position, signals tapped against the walls of the tunnels would give them the command to light the charges and run to the side-shelters prepared for them.

Morgrim observed the assault from the top of the Long Watch. The siege was well into its second month. Snow glimmered from the roofs of Tor Alessi and ice caked the sides of the walls. He worried about how cold it must be down in the tunnels, wondered if perhaps it would be too cold for the zonzharr to catch fire. The same blasts that drove the spikes up into the walls were also expected to light the fuses leading to the secondary charges. If either should fail to catch fire then the entire attack would fail. There wouldn’t be a question of trying again. Once the elgi had even a suspicion of what the dwarfs were about, they’d spare no effort to thwart it. That would mean magic, perhaps even their remaining dragon. Malok had proven how aptly it was named in the weeks since the other drakk had been killed. The list of the wyrm’s victims swelled every time the beast flew out from the city. Either it or its master had grown quite shrewd about avoiding the precautions the dwarfs tried to take against them.

‘Strange to think of this as the quiet before the storm,’ Morgrim said. He handed his spyglass over to the dwarf standing beside him. High King Gotrek squinted suspiciously at the device. Most dwarfs were distrustful of anything new and the spyglasses had only been developed by the engineers’ guild four hundred years before. It would be some time yet before they were accepted as a useful tool rather than an exotic contraption.

‘The elgi have always built to please their eyes,’ Gotrek said. ‘I warned them about that. Who cares how pretty something is if it lacks the strength to endure?’

As Gotrek spoke, the rock upon which the dwarfs stood gave a mighty groan. A jagged crack snaked across its surface, sending an overhang crashing down into the forest. The two dwarfs were sent reeling, fumbling for handholds to stop themselves from falling after the overhang. Smaller stones and pebbles crashed all around the dawi as the quake knocked them loose. Fighting to keep his footing, the High King pressed the spyglass to his eye and nodded. He could see the spikes jutting out from where they’d stabbed their way through the base of the wall. Playing the glass across the length of the fortification, he saw scores of places where the spikes had ripped their way up from below to stab through the stone.

A moment later an even more tremendous shiver passed through the rock. The two dwarfs staggered, almost falling from their perch. Morgrim reached out to help steady his king, but Gotrek waved him off. He was too intent on studying the walls to be distracted.

Great plumes of smoke and dust rolled out from the walls. As they began to clear, Gotrek handed the glass back to Morgrim. ‘You’d better get your warriors moving,’ he advised.

Morgrim peered through the glass. He could see that the wall had been brought down in a dozen places. Dead elves were strewn about the heaps of rubble; on the battlements, stunned elgi were stumbling about in shock. Before they could gather their wits enough to try to defend the breaches, Morgrim wanted his troops well beyond those walls.

‘They’re your warriors,’ Morgrim reminded the king as he started to descend the steps. ‘They fight for the Karaz Ankor and their High King.’

‘They fight for their leader,’ Gotrek corrected him. ‘They fight for the one who takes them into battle. That is you. Elgidum, the great hope of the dawi.’

Morgrim couldn’t linger to reassure his uncle. He knew the doubt and pain behind Gotrek’s words, just as he knew there was nothing he could do to ease that doubt. All he could do was to try and bring his king whatever peace victory over the elgi would allow him.

Volleys of arrows rose from Tor Alessi, raining down into the killing field between the outer and inner walls. Bolt throwers cast their spears at the advancing enemy, impaling dozens of them. Arcane fires swept about the invaders as the elf mages drew upon their magic to burn down scores of the foe.

‘Khazuk! Khazuk!’

Roaring their fierce cries, the dwarfs charged across the killing ground, running the gauntlet of arrows, magic and spears. When sufficiently roused, the normally ponderous dawi could become a raging avalanche of flesh and steel. Such an avalanche stormed through the broken walls, dwarf warriors hurdling the piled rubble with the agility of mountain goats. Some of the elves who’d survived the explosive demolition managed to create a few pockets of resistance. The dwarfs didn’t gain ground without paying a toll in blood though. Such a toll wasn’t enough to stall the impetus of their attack, however. By the hundred and then by the thousand, the dwarfs rushed past the broken wall out onto the open plain. Others rushed up onto the walls they had breached, confronting the surviving archers with hammer and axe. In short order the last holdouts were eliminated.

‘Khazuk! Khazuk!’

The thousands of dwarfs mustering on the plain grew into tens of thousands. Throngs of dwarfs cleared away the rubble piled about the outer wall, making a path for the great siege engines they’d brought to break the city. Now the catapults hurled their burdens over the inner wall and far into the streets; the grudge throwers cast their stones almost into the bay itself.

The inner walls were barely scratched, those same walls that had defied Morgrim the first time he’d laid siege to Tor Alessi almost four centuries before. Every dwarf knew they would be no easy obstacle to clear, yet they also knew that no wall was stronger than the warriors defending it.

A delegation of dwarfs under a flag of truce started to march towards the inner wall’s great gates. They would offer to the inhabitants Morgrim’s terms for surrender, a test to evaluate the resolve of the elgi inside the city.

The delegation had only proceeded part way towards the wall when a strange sound rose up from Tor Alessi. It was faint at first, but it steadily grew until it became a dull roar. Bells rang out from the temples and towers, gongs boomed from the shipyards, horns and trumpets flared. Out on the field, the dawi stared at one another in confusion, wondering what new elgi trickery this sudden celebration might portend.

The dwarfish delegation was stopped when a set of arrows flickered past their noses. Another arrow sheared through the flag they bore, sending them hurrying back to their own lines. Jeers in stilted Khazalid pelted them from the walls. The elgi were mocking them for their presumption.

The battle was far from decided. Because in Tor Alessi’s darkest hour, their homeland had remembered them. The armies of Ulthuan had come at last.

Thoriol could hear the tumult echoing outside his chambers in the Tower of the Dragon. At first he mistook the sounds for those of battle and thought that the dawi had at last forced their way into the city. Then, as the fog of fatigue began to clear from his mind and he became better attuned to his senses, he began to wonder if his injury had driven him mad.

It wasn’t the sounds of battle he was hearing but rather jubilant cheers. Gripped by confusion, bewildered beyond endurance, Thoriol forced himself from his bed. His entire body felt as though it had been scooped out and only a shell remained. From his talks with Liandra, he knew this was what it felt like to have the connection with a dragon broken. No one had to tell him Draukhain was gone; he’d known it the moment he regained consciousness. That feeling of emptiness was even worse than the pain in his side where the crazed dwarf’s axe had struck him. That wound had only threatened his life – the hurt left by Draukhain’s death was a scar against his soul. Flesh could knit and heal, but spiritual hurt lasted forever.

‘My prince, you must rest.’ The alarmed voice belonged to a servant in the livery of Tor Caled. The elf came rushing across the chamber to push Thoriol back into bed. The prince was too weak to mount much of a resistance. Slowly he was forced back among the silk pillows and fur blankets.

‘What is happening outside?’ Thoriol demanded. ‘Why do the people cheer?’

The servant smiled back at him, his face fairly glowing with delight. ‘It is the fleet. The king’s fleet has come.’

Thoriol blinked in amazement. He lifted himself back off the bed. ‘Help me to the window. I must see for myself,’ he told the servant. The other elf demurred for a moment, but then assisted his master to the balcony.

What he saw out in the bay was indeed wondrous. As far as his eye could see, the water was filled with ships, ships of every shape and description, with more cresting the horizon with each breath. It was an armada such as Elthin Arvan had never before witnessed. He marvelled at the spectacle, at the infusion of troops and weaponry that would soon be set against the dwarfs.

He felt a pang of guilt when he realised this was exactly what his mother and people like Caradryel had struggled so long to prevent. King Caledor had ordered the armies of Ulthuan to the colonies. The days of half-measures and limited efforts against the dawi were over. The full might of the ten kingdoms was now being set loose.

Amongst the fleet, Thoriol spied a gigantic white galleon and above it, snapping in the wind, was the dragon and phoenix standard of King Caledor himself.

After almost four centuries, the Phoenix King had returned to Elthin Arvan to put an end to the war.

‘To the wall! To the wall!’ Morgrim’s command rang out as he led hundreds of his own retainers and hearthguard out across the open plain. His shout was taken up by thanes and captains throughout the dawi host. Every champion of that vast throng seized upon the cry, leading their warriors into a massed charge against the inner wall of Tor Alessi. Enormous siege towers and massive war machines were pushed by entire battalions of shouting dwarfs, rushed to where they could deal the most damage to the enemy fortifications.

The pride and hope of only an hour before had withered inside Morgrim’s heart, replaced with a gnawing dread. He’d imagined that at long last the dwarfs were poised to claim a hard-fought victory – an end to the War of the Beards after so many centuries. Then, just as that vision was becoming reality, the elgi fleet appeared, disgorging a flood of fresh warriors to reinforce the city. From the very edge of triumph, the dawi were being thrown back.

‘To the wall!’ Morgrim bellowed once more, trying to force his warriors to greater speed by the sheer power of his voice alone. Beside him, as he ran across the field, Khazagrim waved the thane’s banner frantically from side to side, trying to inspire the dwarfs who had sworn oaths of service and loyalty to that standard.

After so many centuries of conflict, now the matter of victory boiled down to this one instant. If Morgrim could only get his troops to the wall, if the dwarfs could force a foothold upon the barrier before the new elgi warriors arrived, they could still seize the day. The lesser walls within the city that guarded the Old Quarter and the Royal District were far less formidable than the walls that fenced the whole of the city. They would soon crumble once the dawi brought their onagers into Tor Alessi.

If only the dawi were given that opportunity.

Morgrim glanced to his right, watching as a heavy onager rolled towards the wall, hurling chunks of rubble from the outer wall at the turrets and ramparts of the inner. A regiment of quarrellers flanked the war machine, shooting bolts into the elgi archers who tried to harass the advancing catapult.

Looking to his left, Morgrim saw several bolt throwers thrown into position, their crews anchoring the siege engines with great spikes of steel before turning them up towards the walls. The machines cast iron grapples up at the battlements and as each hook caught hold, gangs of dwarf warriors rushed to pull the chains fitted to the grapples and tear down some of the tooth-like crenels, depriving the elven archers of their cover.

‘The gate! The gate!’

Morgrim wasn’t sure who first uttered the cry, but the shouting brought his gaze towards the main entrance into Tor Alessi, the great door through which Imladrik and his entourage had come to parlay with him in that last fruitless peace conference so long ago. Now, the gate was shadowed by a formidable keep, flanked by turrets from which elgi bolt throwers launched spears into the oncoming dawi.

The dwarfs who now rushed at the gate weren’t repulsed by the punishing volleys. They were heavily armoured hammerers from far-off Ekrund, the fiercest warriors of that distant stronghold. They spared little notice for the elgi shooting at them, focusing instead upon helping a gang of engineers push a great bronze-roofed battering ram towards the gate. Smoke and steam spewed from the boiler that projected from the rear of the ram, feeding the engine that would provide the driving impetus of the mechanical juggernaut.

Morgrim caught hold of Khazagrim, pointing in the direction of the hammerers and the battering ram with his axe. ‘We’ll help them,’ he told the old dwarf. ‘They’ll get us inside and then nothing will force us out.’ Khazagrim nodded, waving the banner and dipping it towards the gate so that the following warriors would understand the change in their objective.

Morgrim had reason to question his bold claim that nothing would force the dawi back as he led his troops towards the gates. The full violence of the elf garrison had been unleashed. They recognised their peril and were determined to hold the dwarfs off until their reinforcements could arrive. Great eagles dived down from the sky, snatching dwarfs from the siege towers and releasing them to smash into the infantry far below. Griffons swooped upon the catapults, their snapping beaks and slashing claws wreaking bloody havoc amongst the dwarfish artillerists, while their elven riders demolished the siege engines with spell and sword.

Volleys of arrows arced up from hundreds of archers assembled in the courtyards and squares within the city itself, speeding over the walls to shriek down at the invaders. Again, sharpshooters on the walls themselves took their grisly toll from the advancing dwarfs, striking the weak points in their armour with lethal precision. Eagle claw bolt throwers shot their spears down into the enemy formations, impaling clutches of the close-packed dawi with each cast. Catapults added their brutal violence to the carnage, flagstones pulled up from the streets smashing down upon the dwarfs, pounding their armoured bodies into the earth like bloody nails.

The mages of Tor Alessi unleashed their magic now. Strange fires and lightning fell from the wintry sky, cooking a dozen of Morgrim’s dwarfs as they ran towards the gate. Strange tempests erupted from the nothingness to writhe and rage about the ponderous towers, ripping away their protective skins of oak, canvas and copper plate. The winds shrieked still louder as they wrenched the frames of the towers apart, spilling dwarfs hundreds of feet to the frozen earth below. One by one, the mighty towers were broken apart by phantom claws and icy gales.

‘Onward! To honour and vengeance!’ Morgrim shouted, trying to spur his warriors ahead for the final effort. Through the riotous carnage inflicted by the elgi, the dwarfs pressed on. If they could only force their way into the city, then whatever sacrifices they made would be worth it.

While Morgrim led his followers towards the gate, other dawi were answering the elgi assault. Rune-lightning crackled up from the ancient Anvils of Doom as the runelords of the dwarfs forced their arcane power into violent manifestations. With each crack of their hammers, the erudites sent their magic snaking up at the walls, following the aethyric reverberations of their spells back to the mages who cast them. Some of the elven wizards, guarded by talismans and charms, endured the dwarfish reprisals, but others were reduced to smouldering carcasses by the malignant energies hurled at them by the ancient Anvils.

Companies of Ironbreakers, their armour engraved with runes of aethyric discord, formed protective cordons around the runelords, acting as a barrier against the magical assaults of the elf mages. Steaming showers of starfire sizzled harmlessly from their armour; pulsations of kinetic fury were reduced to naught but a faint breeze when they slammed into the Ironbreakers. Thus, it was from a different quarter that the elves attacked the dawi mystics. Roaring its reptilian wrath, the dragon Malok dived upon the Ironbreakers, ripping and crushing them in its claws. Its fiery breath licked out at the Anvil of Doom each company protected, washing over artefact and runelord alike. Then, before weapons could be brought against it, Malok would leap back into the sky, flying beyond the range of its foes until it was prepared to swoop down again. Anvils from Karak Kadrin, Karak Izor and Karak Norn were lost to the dragon, reduced to slag by its volcanic breath – further grudges to be levelled against the wyrm in the Dammaz Kron.

The steam-powered ram began its assault against the gates, crossbowmen trying to ward off the attentions of the elves shooting down at the machine. Thanks to its metal roof, the flaming arrows the elgi loosed at the machine couldn’t burn it, but there was a chance the defenders might manage to hit the pipes and pistons that drove the steel-capped ram into the gate. The hammerers from Ekrund waited nearby, ready to force any breach the ram provided and be the first dwarfs in centuries to penetrate into Tor Alessi.

Slowly the dawi were making progress, but it was too little to counter the rapid, disciplined deployment of the troops from Ulthuan. While still at sea, the generals of the asur and their king had plotted their strategy. Aware that the city was already under siege, they drew up exacting plans for rushing their soldiers straight to the front. A system of coloured flags displayed by the king’s flagship alerted every ship in his fleet of the situation they’d find in Tor Alessi and how they would be expected to respond. From a selection of fifty flags, each with its own meanings and associated commands, it was a red pennant with a white star that unfurled from the galleon’s mast – indicating that the dawi were through the outer wall and staging an assault upon the inner one.

As soon as the ships drew into the harbour, the asur warriors disembarked, armed and armoured for war. Their commanders had given them exacting instruction on where they should deploy once they made landfall, showing them on intricate maps of the city where they needed to go and which streets they would use to get there. When the warriors entered the city, there was no hesitation or confusion. Like cogs in a well-oiled machine, they swiftly formed ranks and hurried to their assigned positions.

The first the dwarfs were aware of the reinforcements was when the volleys rising from behind the walls swelled, the flights of arrows becoming so thick that their shadows created a flickering twilight across the battlefield. The siege towers were suddenly no longer menaced by elgi magic, but as the first of them crashed against the wall and lowered its hooked ramp, the dwarfs were swarmed by fresh battalions of grim-faced spearmen and swordsmen. Far from gaining a foothold on the wall, the dwarfs were decimated in a display of such ferocious butchery that the towers were quickly withdrawn.

The steam-powered ram became the next focus of elven reprisal. A blinding glow suffused the machine and the dwarfs around it, an aethyric glamour that expanded and throbbed with magical power. As the dazzling light intensified, the dwarfs began to scatter, abandoning the machine. Some weren’t quite fast enough and as they tried to run, the light overwhelmed them. In a howling flash, the light suddenly winked out, leaving behind it only a deep crater where the battering ram and its protectors had been. The dawi would never know that the ram had been translocated by the wizardry of asur loremasters, that the machine and the dwarfs caught with it had been transported out into the bay, there to sink and drown beneath the waters.

It was with a heavy heart and a bitter taste in his mouth that Morgrim finally gave the command to withdraw. Horns blared, runners were dispatched and signals flashed from mirrors. Gradually, the command was disseminated amongst the dwarfs. Sharing their general’s reluctance, the dawi began to fall back, marching away from the walls to establish a perimeter just inside the outer curtain they had already captured.

Instead of cheers and trumpets, the asur marked the repulse of the dwarf assault in a different fashion. From the highest towers in the city, a new pennant was unfurled: a white flag upon which a red dragon and phoenix were emblazoned. It was all the elves had to say to their attackers.

The King of Ulthuan had come to save Tor Alessi.

King Caledor II threw open the doors of Thoriol’s chamber, dispatching the healers and servants attending his nephew and heir. He waved an armoured gauntlet at the White Lions who surrounded him, motioning them to await him in the hall outside. Only Envaldein, the captain of his guard, remained, closing the door and standing with his back set against the portal.

The king removed his gilded helm, handing it to Envaldein as he hurried across the room. Nestled amidst the golden splendour of the helm and the ruby-encrusted dragon-wings flaring out from its sides, the glittering brilliance of the Phoenix Crown shone like a sliver of starlight. The king belatedly remembered his crown, turning after a few steps to snatch his helm back from the White Lion. Then, with slightly less haste, he resumed his walk to the chair in which his nephew reclined.

‘Blood of Asuryan,’ Caledor shouted. ‘What do you think you are doing? Is this what you think it means to bolster the confidence of the colonials? To risk yourself in senseless battles against grubby, mud-slugging savages? I did not allow you to come here to take such chances.’

Thoriol smiled at the outraged king. For all the many reasons he had to despise his uncle, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt at provoking such concern in him. ‘If the dawi are such miserable creatures, why should there be any risk to me, a prince of Tor Caled?’

Caledor wagged his finger at his heir’s impertinence. ‘Don’t think to turn my words back on me. A griffon can still get stung by a bloatfly. Just because something is contemptible doesn’t mean it can’t hurt you.’ He looked around a moment, shifting his gaze from one chair to another, as though trying to decide which would inconvenience his royal dignity the least. Finally he drew a cherrywood chair with velvet backing towards Thoriol.

‘By all the Cadai, I thought you’d be safe with that dragon,’ Caledor said. ‘I should have insisted you come home long ago, but I thought that creature would protect you. I didn’t think there was any power in the world that could strike down that brute of your father’s. I should have known better. It didn’t save my brother, so how could it save you?’

‘Draukhain,’ Thoriol corrected the king. ‘His name was Draukhain and he did save me. When Morgrim was ready to kill me, it was Draukhain who intervened. The garrison on the walls saw it all. He fought the dwarf lord to the very last. Maybe killing Draukhain quenched Morgrim’s thirst for blood. For whatever reason, he had one of the dawi mages attend my wound and then bring me back to our people.’

‘The mud-eaters did that?’ Caledor scoffed. ‘An empty gesture if they think they can win my forgiveness.’ His eyes hardened. ‘What about this Morgrim? That’s the animal that struck down your father. What sort of brute is this creature? Before I leave this place, I intend to hang his beard from the yardarm of my flagship. It will be small recompense for my brother, but it will be a start.’

‘Don’t you see? That is why this war isn’t going to end until one or the other of us can’t fight,’ Thoriol said. ‘We’re just going to keep battering away at each other. Morgrim killed my father, you killed his cousin. There’s just too much blood on all our hands to ever see them clean again.’

‘What would you have me do?’ the king growled. ‘I should forget that they killed Imladrik? I should forget all the cities they’ve razed to the ground? I should forget all the blood and treasure these animals have cost my kingdom? Do you expect me to forgive these beasts for all of that?’

Thoriol shook his head. ‘No, I don’t. It wouldn’t matter anyway. The dawi don’t feel they have anything they need to be forgiven for. They wouldn’t accept it. I don’t think they’d accept anything we could give them.’

‘Then what do you advise?’ Caledor asked. ‘Should we let these creatures drive us from Elthin Arvan? Should we abandon everything we tried to do here? Should we cast aside what your father died for? Is that the legacy you would inherit – a legacy of compromise and retreat?’ The king leaned forwards, clasping Thoriol’s hands between his own. ‘You are the future of House Tor Caled. In your veins burns the fires of our line. When I am gone, you are the one who will wear my crown. There can be no doubt about that. I would leave you a shining realm – strong, prosperous, reaching from sunrise to sunset. A new golden age of plenty for our people. If we are beaten here, if we do as your mother and those like her want, it will kill the pride of Ulthuan. We will lose our sense of destiny and purpose.

‘No,’ Caledor corrected himself, ‘we won’t lose them. They will still be there, the ambition of empire and the pride of accomplishment. But they will forever be tainted by the poison of doubt. We’ll never again be so certain of our path, so sure of our purpose. Always in the back of our minds, in the depths of our souls will be that little voice reminding us that the dwarfs forced us from these lands. Like a cancer, it will bleed the strength from our people.’

The king rose from his chair and walked to the balcony, staring out over the bay and the vast fleet he’d brought to relieve the siege. ‘I won’t be the one to leave such poison behind me. I won’t have that be my legacy. When the chronicles are written, I won’t have my rule be a mockery of what came before. I am the son of King Caledor and I am worthy of that name. In my heart pumps the same blood as that of the Conqueror, the king who drove Malekith and his cursed followers from Ulthuan. I am the Phoenix King!’

Thoriol stared at his uncle in silence, startled by the passion in his voice. In his more candid moments, Imladrik had sometimes spoken of the great burden his brother bore and how onerous it must be. It was not the weight of the Phoenix Crown, but the strain of trying to measure up to their father’s expectations. From the earliest age, Menlaeth had been pushed to carry on the legacy of King Caledor I and always the king had pushed him harder and harder. Never had Menlaeth been good enough in his father’s eyes; never had he earned the king’s regard. That was the real legacy he’d inherited.

‘We can’t always choose what it is we will leave behind,’ Thoriol said. ‘I don’t think we can abandon the colonies. At the same time, the dwarfs aren’t an enemy we can fight half-heartedly. It must be all or nothing.’

The king turned away from the balcony. ‘All or nothing,’ he repeated. ‘If we could break the dwarfs here – one great battle. Then the animals would be forced to submit.’

Caledor turned as sharp knocking rattled the door. He nodded to Envaldein, who admitted the Lady Aelis and a pair of dour-looking generals. All three bowed as they approached their king.

‘My liege,’ Lady Aelis said, ‘a dwarfish delegation is outside the wall under a flag of truce. They request–’

‘Khaine take them and their requests,’ Caledor snapped. ‘If they don’t have the stomach to fight then let them scurry back to their burrows.’

‘Sire, their king is here – their High King, the lord of them all,’ Lady Aelis explained. ‘Gotrek Starbreaker wants to speak with you. He is offering terms for peace.’

A bitter laugh rang out as Caledor heard the news. ‘You see, Thoriol. A show of force, real force, and these boastful animals start reconsidering things. By the gods, we’ll put these mud-eaters back in the ground where they belong.’

The king settled his helm back onto his head, his crown still aglow with its enchanted brilliance. ‘Assemble the Council of Five and all your generals. After we go through the formality of receiving and dismissing this request from the mud-eaters, we must make our plans. I don’t want the dwarfs escaping here with anything that still looks like an army.’

As he passed Envaldein, Caledor motioned for the captain to remain. ‘Stay and guard the prince,’ he told the White Lion. ‘See that he gets the best care. I want him looking his best when we bring these dwarfs to their knees and they come crawling to me for mercy.’

Thoriol watched his uncle leave. He thought about the king’s talk of legacies and destiny, and like Caledor he wondered what it was that he’d leave when he was gone.

The gloom within the great hall beneath the rock of the Long Watch was more than simple darkness. It was a brooding malignance, an almost palpable atmosphere of doom that set fingers of ice raking down the spines of even the stoutest dwarfs. The source of that grim atmosphere sat at the head of his long table, ensconced within the ancient Throne of Power. The High King of the Karaz Ankor had withdrawn to the underground vault soon after the elgi reinforcements arrived and the colours of their king were unfurled. For many days, he had sat in the dark, centuries of hate turning his heart into a blackened cinder.

‘He is here,’ Gotrek snarled. ‘After all this time, he is finally here.’

The High King glared at the captured banner, feeling the fury boiling inside him. The dragon and the phoenix, wings and talons spread. The heraldry of Ulthuan’s current Phoenix King. The symbols of Caledor II. The same as the flags that now flew above Tor Alessi.

‘All the death, all the carnage, all the centuries of strife, all the suffering and deprivation – all of it,’ Gotrek declared, ‘all of it is because of him. Everything we have suffered is invested in that one miserable elgi.’ In Gotrek’s mind, in the minds of most dwarfs, the elgi king had become the face of the enemy, the cause of the war. The shame of Forek and the steelbeards, the murder of Snorri Halfhand – these were the crimes of Caledor, crimes that no dwarf could forgive.

Gotrek leaned forwards, cupping his head in his hands. Tears glistened at the corners of his eyes. ‘I am weary of the killing. I only want an end to it all. After all this time, after watching so many die in the fighting, I only want it to stop. Taking Tor Alessi could have been enough.’ Through his fingers, he lifted his gaze back to the captured banner.

‘But now he is here!’ Gotrek raged as he sat upright and clenched his fists. ‘The bastard has come back! He’s here! He’s close enough that I can feel his rancid breath, hear his rotten heart. He’s out there, just beyond the reach of my armies and my hammer. He’s there, just waiting to be made to pay for what he’s done!’

If it took every axe in the Karaz Ankor, if he had to draw every dwarf in the world from their mines and mountains, Gotrek would break Tor Alessi now. The whole of dwarfdom would march under his banner as they brought the Phoenix King’s ruin.

His banner. Gotrek would lead his armies into battle when the fighting resumed. It was no slight against Morgrim or his ability to command, but the conflict had taken a new turn with the arrival of Caledor himself. It had become a conflict of kings now, Gotrek against Caledor, just as it should always have been. When he defeated the elgi king, it would be his own accomplishment.

‘Vengeance will be mine,’ Gotrek swore. ‘No one, not even the gods themselves, will stay my hand.’ The old king stroked his beard, letting his fingers linger over the beads of mourning nestled amidst his snowy hair, strung there so long ago in memory of his murdered son. Justice and recompense for Snorri were almost at hand. Gotrek had already set the boulder rolling that would become an avalanche such as the elgi had never dreamed of.

‘The elgi have heard my demands now,’ Gotrek said. ‘They’ve had two days to think about them. But those demands aren’t meant for the elgi. Word of my terms will be passed to every hold in the Karaz Ankor. From Kraka Drak to Karak Eight Peaks, every dwarf will hear of what I’ve offered the elgi – wergild to buy them peace.’ The High King chuckled darkly at the cynical wisdom of his ploy. ‘The smell of gold will draw out the other dawi kings, the ones who’ve sent only a token of support for this siege. Even kings weary of battle will come running when they see the promise of elgi gold and compensation for what their holds have suffered in the war. They’ll bring their armies with them, a show of force to help strengthen their own demands against the elgi.’

A snort of bitter laughter wheezed from the High King. In a way, by making his journey to Tor Alessi, Caledor had not only brought fresh troops to the elves, he’d given Gotrek the best instrument with which to draw the full might of his kingdom into one great throng. Duty, honour, loyalty and obligation – these were all powerful, tremendous forces in the hearts and minds of the dwarfs, but they were slow, ponderous things that took time to stir and bring to a boil. Greed, however… greed was something that could make a grey-headed venerable as spry as a beardling.

The elf king had brought the might of his nation to Tor Alessi. Soon Gotrek would be able to do the same.

‘Maybe the elgi will pay the wergild,’ Gotrek mused. ‘When they see the vast throng arrayed against them, maybe they will forget their pride. Grimnir forbid! Let them remain defiant and arrogant. Let them fight us!’

Gotrek swept his gaze across the empty darkness of his hall. Except for his memories, he was alone in the shadowy vault. It was to one of those memories that the High King spoke.

‘Gold and treasure won’t bring you back,’ Gotrek whispered, ‘but the blood of the elgi king will bring peace to your spirit, my son.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Duel of Kings
597th year of the reign of Caledor II

The smell of burning wood hung heavy upon the air. The Loren Lacoi rang with the crack of axes and the gruff voices of dwarfs.

Liandra watched from the boughs of the oak she’d climbed, watching and waiting for the marching dwarfs to draw closer. Never before had such a vast horde of the dawi come tromping into the forest. They numbered not in the hundreds but in the thousands. Their march was like a raging tempest, smashing through the trees like a hurricane, careless and indifferent to the destruction they wrought. By axe and torch, they cut their way across the land, a great monster of steel and muscle crushing all in its path.

Dimly, Liandra wondered what had engendered such boisterous arrogance in the usually dour dawi. Surely something of great consequence to make them raise their voices in bawdy songs, to pass flagons of beer and mead from the hulking carts that accompanied them. Even in times of peace the dwarfs had been wary of the forests, and with the war they’d come to shun any stand of trees that might conceal asur bows. Something had changed, something that made the dwarfs contemptuous of the risks of forest trails and too proud to stalk their underground vaults.

Had the dawi finally claimed victory over the elves? Was it possible they’d captured Tor Alessi? Liandra was surprised to find how little she cared about either possibility. Those were concerns from a different time and a different world. All that mattered now was the forest, the sanctuary that had sheltered her people for so many decades. Whatever had happened outside, be it war or peace, the dwarfs made battle against the forest and that was all Liandra’s people needed to know.

She had only seven hundred fighters between the camps. Their numbers had slowly grown through the years as children matured and stragglers from the outside found their way into the forest. There had even been a few more like Aismarr, fey elves with strange eyes and a weird air of wisdom about them. Many were veterans of the fighting against Forek Grimbok, and some had even taken part in the great battles outside. Many more were untested. She knew their skill with the bow – a few had even taken dwarfish stragglers before – but none of them had been called to fight in a real battle until now. It would be a baptism of fire, one that might burn them all if too many of the novices lost their courage.

The elves were arrayed along the flanks of the advancing dwarfs, slipping like shadows from tree to tree and bush to bush. Decades lurking in the wilds had given them a facility for shifting and fading into their surroundings that bordered on the mystical. Liandra had seen some of her best scouts steal so near to a buck that they brought the animal down with knives rather than arrows. The dwarfs, by comparison, were a simple adversary to hide from. Even their rangers, the only warriors among them with some knack for woodcraft, failed to sound the alarm.

Seven hundred against perhaps ten times their number. They were odds that Liandra would have shunned even with Vranesh at her side. Yet she didn’t intend to give battle to the whole dwarfish host. To drive them from the forest, they need kill only one dwarf. Her scouts had already brought her word of the dwarf king with the tall, golden crown who marched with the dawi, borne along on a sort of stone palanquin by a dozen burly warriors. That was the dwarf they had to kill. Whether he was their High King or simply the ruler of a single stronghold, he was clearly the leader of the army. There were few things that could make dwarfs abandon the field of battle, but the death of their lord was one. They’d gather up the body and hurry to enshrine his remains in a crypt. Only after their dead hero was entombed would they begin turning their minds to reprisal and revenge.

On the bough just below her, Aismarr shared Liandra’s vigil. Once again, the fey elf had dispatched her mangy hound on some obscure errand, and once again Liandra knew better than to ask her purpose in sending the dog away. There were no answers when Aismarr spoke, only more questions.

Still, Liandra never thought it hurt to ask. ‘Is this part of our trial as well? Are we still being tested?’

Aismarr closed her eyes and nodded. ‘Your trial nears its end,’ she said. ‘But whether for good or ill, I do not know.’

Liandra fixed her gaze back on the advancing dwarfs. She felt an unspeakable revulsion as she watched them clearing their road through the forest. Each tree they struck down, each bramble and bush they put to the torch, all of it filled her with a disgust she hadn’t felt even when she watched them burn Athel Maraya.

‘So long as there are dwarfs to kill, I do not care,’ Liandra said. She waved her staff before her, a length of yew topped by a strangely gnarled knot that resembled some impish face. A grey light streaked from the end of the staff, shrieking up over the trees to explode in a spiral of shimmering embers. Before the invading dwarfs could react to the arcane flare, the elves lying in wait at either side of the path snapped into action. Arrows whistled out from the trees, stabbing into victims chosen minutes before. A hundred dwarfs were struck down in that first butchering assault, twice that number wounded or maimed.

The lurking elves didn’t wait for the dwarfs to come rushing into the undergrowth looking for them. As soon as the first arrows were loosed, the asur were already in motion, fading to another vantage from which to attack the invaders.

Liandra knew that they had to be careful. If the asur proved too elusive, then the dwarfs would become frustrated and in their malice would simply try to burn the trees to root out their hidden foes. Deliberately, some of her people held back, exposing themselves and sacrificing their lives to encourage the dwarfs to pursue them into the forest. Even the most enraged dwarf wouldn’t consider burning the woods while his kinsfolk were among the trees.

The dwarf king recognised the peril presented by the headlong rush of his warriors in pursuit of their shadowy enemies. Standing up from his stone throne, the silver-bearded dwarf howled at his subjects, raging at them to fall back and form ranks. Liandra was surprised that she recognised that voice and the ostentatious crown that circled the dwarf’s head. He was Varnuf of Karak Eight Peaks, one of the more belligerent dwarf lords she’d met at that long-ago feast at Karaz-a-Karak. The years of conflict hadn’t been kind to Varnuf. He’d lost an arm in some engagement, replacing it with a surrogate of gold. One of his eyes was milky and blind, and one of his ears notched where an arrow had almost ripped it from his head. Age had taken its toll as well, withering his limbs and curling his back. Yet there was still an air of command about the old dwarf and an imperiousness in his voice that made his subjects attend his every word.

Liandra drew the aethyric vibrations from the air around her. Since retreating into the forest, her old abilities had atrophied, the fiery magics that had once been as natural to her as breathing. In their stead had come strange, eerie patterns – conjurations that seemed to imprint themselves onto her mind. She was certain she’d never learned them from some hoary old tome, or heard them discussed by a loremaster. They were too raw and primal to be the magic of books and scholars, too wild to be bound by the strictures of theory and hypothesis.

At her instigation, Liandra formed the vibrations into a coruscating nimbus of amber light. With a word, the light leapt from her staff, expanding, twisting and writhing until it was sent streaming along the road the dwarfs had gouged from the forest. The trees the light passed through were left unharmed and untouched, but wherever it struck dwarfish flesh, the dawi burned.

Varnuf and his thronebearers were lost for an instant in the amber light, but only for an instant. When the glow faded, the dwarf king and his bodyguards stood unharmed, runes of protection glowing fiercely from their armour. A gnarled runelord glared out from among the king’s entourage. Thrusting his staff forwards, he called upon his own magic to strike back at Liandra.

The fire the runelord called forth scorched its way through the trees. Barely had Liandra and Aismarr leapt down from the oak in which they perched before the thick boles and branches were transformed into a great pyre. Liandra raised her staff again, conjuring a roaring tempest to smother the flames the runelord had kindled. As she sought to quench the fire, the dwarfs were already charging towards her, determined to slay the witch who had tried to kill their king.

Aismarr drew her blade and struck down the first of the dwarfs rushing to confront Liandra. The armoured axeman fell, his throat opened from ear to ear. A second dawi dropped, then a third. Aismarr cried out as the fourth dwarf’s axe ripped down her leg, opening it to the bone. A fifth dwarf smashed her ribs with his hammer. Then the warriors were surging past the dying she-elf to come to grips with the mage herself.

Fierce war-whoops sounded from amidst the trees. Arrows streaked out from the shadows to strike down the dwarfs closest to Liandra. As she turned from extinguishing the fires, her heart became heavy. Hundreds of her people were rushing out from the forest, rallying to her aid. They struck at the dwarfs with their swords and spears, heedless of the thick armour, and superior numbers, of their foe. Stealth and woodcraft, the greatest weapons the elves had at their disposal, had been abandoned in this vainglorious attempt to save their leader.

Liandra drew upon her powers once more. She couldn’t let her people be massacred any more than she could let the forest be despoiled. She had to make the effort, had to try the only thing that might at least give them a pyrrhic victory. If they could yet strike down Varnuf, then they could still turn the dawi back. Even if none of them were alive to see it.

Even as Liandra focused her mind upon the grim conjuration, cries of terror rose from the dwarfs. From the edges of the forest, shapes now emerged, weird and monstrous figures that reached out with wooden talons to pluck dwarfs from the road. Ghastly creatures of wood creaked out onto the path, lumbering on trunk-like legs and flailing about with branch-like arms to rend and slay. Ghostly lights shone from knotted faces, glaring at the dwarfs with ancient malignance. The dawi, their faces pale with fright, closed ranks and pressed back towards the road they had been cutting. A palpable aura of fear rose from the dwarfs.

The forest itself had come alive, had roused itself to combat the invaders who would maim it with axe and flame.

A great, hulking thing stomped out from the woods, a giant of bark and timber with only the roughest semblance of a humanoid form. The hollows of its trunk formed the vaguest image of a scowling visage, jagged splinters lending the impression of a fanged maw gaping beneath its hollow eyes. The wooden giant brought its clawed hands smashing down, pulverising several of Varnuf’s thronebearers with a single blow. The stone seat lurched to one side, hurling the horrified king to the ground. The treeman loomed up above him while its lesser kin rampaged among his army.

Swiftly, Liandra refocused her spell, training her magic not upon the king, but against the runelord. Only the dwarf mystic could have the power to harm the gigantic treeman – and that was something she had to prevent, whatever the cost. Aismarr had spoken of trials and tests. At this moment, Liandra understood what the fey elf had meant.

How much was she willing to sacrifice to defend something greater than herself?

Liandra sent the roiling ball of shadow she evoked crawling across the runelord. The dwarf tried to banish the malefic conjuration, but as he strained to dispel it, Liandra focused more and more of herself into the attack. The magic of the dwarfs was more earthy than that of elves, more bound to things and objects. The runelord, for all his skill and experience, simply couldn’t match the powers Liandra brought to bear. With a cry that was more resignation than despair, the runelord’s counter-magic failed and the arcane blight his foe had called forth swept down upon him. The dwarf’s armour corroded off his body, his beard withered to its roots, and his flesh crumbled and flaked away. In only a few heartbeats, all that was left of him was a little pile of ash.

Liandra reeled back from the tremendous toll of her conjuration. She was too weak to defend herself as the dawi warrior came charging at her. He thrust at her with the head of his axe, the spike fixed to its tip piercing her breast. Even as she felt her life pouring out from the wound, Liandra smiled. Beyond her attacker, she could see the treeman standing tall, Varnuf’s aged body clutched in one of its great branch-like claws. As she watched, the giant closed its hand into a fist and burst the shrieking king like a blood-gorged tick.

As a warm, peaceful darkness washed over her, Liandra heard the cries of battle fading away, drowned out by a soft, inviting harmony. It was a sound strange to her ears, yet it seemed dear and familiar to her soul, as if it had always been there inside her, biding its time.

The voice of the forest.

Caradryel had ever been a light sleeper. A few too many dalliances with married ladies had impressed the habit upon him. Now, the uncomfortable weight of his new duties only added to his sleeplessness. Inveigled in the confidences of those opposed to the king, only to then be appointed steward by that same king! He had to hand it to Caledor – he was as cunning as a jackal. It certainly couldn’t be lost on him that Caradryel’s appointment would make his detractors assume the new steward had betrayed them. Given the intrigues Caradryel had been involved in before taking service with House Tor Caled, he had to concede that such suspicions weren’t completely irrational. With a suspected traitor to worry about, the king’s enemies would be taking pains to be as discreet and unobtrusive as possible.

While at the same time seeing what steps they could initiate to remove the elf who’d betrayed them.

That cheery notion focused Caradryel’s thoughts on the sound that had awoken him. Straining his ears, he waited for it to be repeated. His vigilance was rewarded several minutes later when he heard a footfall sound from the direction of the door. The sound that had disturbed him was that door being opened. Now he listened as the intruder crept across the room.

Caradryel had taken up the practice of sleeping with a dagger strapped to his arm. He drew the blade now, holding it behind his back to conceal its presence. He wasn’t skilled at throwing a blade, indeed he was doubtful of his facility with any weapon, but assumed his chances would be better the closer his enemy was. Holding his breath, he waited while the creeping steps drew closer.

When he judged the owner of those footsteps to be somewhere near the foot of his bed, Caradryel did something he was certain would take his guest by surprise. Although he wasn’t a mage by any stretch of the imagination, he’d spent enough time visiting the courts of Saphery to learn a few small tricks, such as the cantrip he now evoked. Shutting his eyes, he conjured up a dazzling flare of light that instantly threw the darkened room into brilliance.

Caradryel felt the bed shiver as something violently slammed into it. Opening his eyes again, he found a dagger stuck into the sheets and a blinded elf standing beside his bed groping for the weapon. Outraged that this coward should steal in here and try to murder him in his sleep, Caradryel lashed out with his own blade, raking it across the would-be assassin’s hand.

The intruder recoiled in both pain and surprise. Caradryel was shocked himself when his attacker lowered his arm to clutch at his injured hand. The elf’s features were far from unknown to him.

‘Hulviar,’ Caradryel gasped.

The outburst was a mistake. Snarling, the seneschal turned towards the sound of Caradryel’s voice and lunged at him. Hulviar’s hands closed about Caradryel’s neck, thumbs pressing against his windpipe.

Caradryel stabbed his dagger into Hulviar’s breast, plunging it again and again into his attacker. Just when he thought he’d surely be throttled before the seneschal expired, he felt Hulviar’s grip relax. With a groan, the assassin collapsed on top of him. Caradryel shoved the corpse aside, letting it crash to the floor.

The door to his chambers burst inwards a moment later. Caradryel found himself staring at a pair of armoured White Lions, the king’s own bodyguard. He could imagine the spectacle he must present – covered in blood, a bloodied dagger in his hand and the blood-soaked corpse of the king’s seneschal lying practically at his feet.

Caradryel started to speak, to offer an explanation for the grisly scene, but before he could, the White Lions were surging towards him.

‘Are you unharmed, my lord?’ one of the guards inquired, plucking at his nightshirt to check for wounds. ‘The sentry outside your door is dead,’ he added, answering a question that hadn’t occurred to Caradryel until that moment.

‘It is lucky you chose to check on me when you did,’ Caradryel said.

The White Lion shook his head. ‘It wasn’t luck, my lord. We were conducting a messenger to see you.’ He nudged the corpse of Hulviar with his foot. ‘Lord Hulviar said he would awaken you, but the messenger said his report couldn’t wait. It was at his insistence that we came when we did.’

Caradryel looked past the guards to the doorway. Once again he was shocked to recognise a visitor. First an assassin proved to be Lord Hulviar, then a messenger was revealed to be Lord Athinol.

The highborn bowed as he stepped towards the bed. ‘Forgive my intrusion, but the tidings I bear are of the utmost urgency.’ He looked down at Hulviar. ‘Maybe more urgent than any of us know. A fleet has been spotted sailing out from the Sea of Chill. A fleet of black sails and floating fortresses. A druchii fleet.’

The news sent a thrill of horror through Caradryel. He stared down at Hulviar. At first he’d thought the seneschal had tried to murder him in accord with some orders Caledor had left behind. Now he knew it was a different master Hulviar had served. Not all who believed in Malekith’s right to the Phoenix Crown were druchii. There were still some in the ten kingdoms who thought the Witch King was their rightful lord and master. How carefully Malekith must have plotted to get one of these traitorous asur so close to Caledor. Hulviar, always at the king’s shoulder, dispensing his poisoned advice and encouraging the king’s excesses.

The War of the Beard, this thoughtless, wasteful conflict with the dawi – It was nothing but a scheme concocted by Malekith to weaken Ulthuan, to give him time to rebuild his forces and invade. While the asur struggled against the dawi, the druchii had been given the time to build their ships and armies. Feigning weakness, pretending to be on the verge of defeat, Malekith had hidden his real strength until now, until the moment when Ulthuan was most vulnerable.

‘There is no time to waste,’ Caradryel declared. ‘All defences must be readied against invasion. I’ll need a fast ship and a dependable crew. The king must be informed and he must bring the army back from Elthin Arvan.’

High King Gotrek stood on the broken battlements of the outer wall, facing towards the yet unconquered city. It was the third time that the king had climbed up onto the structure and addressed the enemy inside the city. In the two weeks since the arrival of the Phoenix King, the dawi had yet to catch a glimpse of the hated Caledor. By his display, Gotrek wanted to let both dawi and elgi alike know that he wasn’t afraid to show himself, unlike his foe.

‘A hundred-weight of gold shall be the price for Karak Hirn. A hundred-weight of gold shall be the price for Karak Izor. A thousand-weight of gold shall be the price of Barak Varr.’ High King Gotrek’s voice boomed out from Tor Alessi’s ruined battlements, hurled like a spear at the city before him by the great brass horns into which he spoke. Some connivance of the engineers’ guild had led to the crafting of the device, an invention to both magnify and project the king’s voice.

It was the third time, too, that Gotrek had read his demands –demands for the wergild that the dwarfs would have from the elgi. There had been no response to his prior readings, only the defiant silence of the inner wall and the city beyond.

As he read through the list, Gotrek stared up at the great towers of Tor Alessi, blackened by the smoke of war, cracked by the few stones that had managed to strike them. Above each of the spires flew the hated banners of the Phoenix King. From across the whole of the Karaz Ankor, Gotrek’s subject kings had come, seeking restitution from the elgi. Only Varnuf of Karak Eight Peaks and Zar of Karak Zorn had failed to come. The kings had spent days debating how much wergild to demand from the elgi and how great should be the share of each stronghold. It had been a tedious process and one in which the king placed no faith.

The elgi would pay no ransom, no restitution. The only thing to be gained by such talk had already been accomplished – the gathering of a throng vast enough to tear down the city with their bare hands. By coaxing the other kings to Tor Alessi, Gotrek had assembled an army unlike anything seen since the days of Snorri Whitebeard.

It was an army that would bring him not gold, but the head of the elgi king.

Gotrek finished reading his list of demands and turned away from the array of horns. He saw the kings of the dawi waiting for him below, their expressions eager, goldlust smouldering in their eyes. Much nearer to him was his nephew Morgrim. His expression was far less eager. The High King hadn’t been able to deceive his heir about his intentions.

‘Ready the grudge throwers,’ Gotrek told Morgrim. ‘And tell Morek… Tell him he may do as he judges necessary.’

The last remark made Morgrim wince more than when the wound in his side pained him. ‘There must be another way.’

Gotrek sighed and ran his fingers through his beard. ‘There is. We can sit here for months, maybe years, trying to break the elgi. We can’t starve them out – they’ll just get supplies from the sea, so it will mean wearing them down, stone by stone. That will mean more dawi sent to wander the halls of their ancestors.’

‘The elgi might pay,’ Morgrim suggested. ‘But would that satisfy you?’

‘No,’ the king confessed. ‘But if the elgi pay, I am now obligated to accept. I have to abide by my word to them. To do less would be… like breaking an oath.’ Gotrek pointed at the city, waving his finger at it. ‘They won’t pay,’ he declared. ‘Their king is too arrogant for that. He’d sooner see his whole kingdom burn than admit weakness. Such is the way of boastful braggarts with more pride than brains.’

Gotrek locked eyes with Morgrim. ‘See that the grudge throwers are ready. Remind the crews of their targets. We’ll give the elgi until sunset to answer our demands, then I will order the attack. The kings of the Karaz Ankor will simply have to content themselves with whatever plunder they can loot from the rubble when we’re through.

‘Tor Alessi will fall and the Phoenix King will die,’ Gotrek decreed, clenching his fist. ‘By Grungni and Grimnir, I’ll hear Caledor draw his last breath and watch the light fade from his eyes.’

The council chamber of the Tower of the Winds was filled with the great and powerful of Tor Alessi – the nobles, mages, priests and warlords who commanded the respect and fealty of the asur colonists. Their numbers had been swelled by the generals and highborn who had made the voyage from Ulthuan with the Phoenix King. Lady Aelis sat in the old seat from which she had once adjudicated Elthin Arvan’s Council of Five. Now, of course, her authority was superseded by that of Caledor. The king made that much immediately clear. Aelis called the meeting right after Gotrek issued his demands, but Caledor had kept them waiting until well into the afternoon before making his appearance and initiating the conference.

‘If you were to pay the dawi, we could earn concessions from them. They would withdraw to their mountains and leave us to our lands,’ Aelis appealed to the king.

From the high throne of Tor Alessi’s council chamber, the same chair that had once been occupied by his brother Prince Imladrik, King Caledor scowled down at Lady Aelis. She had ever been too timid of temperament for the war, an asset that had been exploited by the barrage of generals the king had sent to the colonies over the years. The fact that she saw opportunity in the dwarf demands was something that seemed to Caledor to border on complete idiocy.

‘You would have us pay these animals for burning our cities and killing our people?’ Caledor’s tone was sharp enough to cut steel. ‘And what happens the next time one of their mud-eating wretches stubs his toe crossing our lands? Do we bend our knee and pay another ransom to these brutes?’ He shook his head, incredulous at the idea. ‘Are we the children of Asuryan? Are we the proper masters of the world? Are we the asur? Or are we dogs to grovel and cringe at the grumbling of a mole-king?’ Caledor smacked the flat of his hand against the arm of the throne. ‘By all the gods, we will not pay this bastard or his dirty mob of badgers. He’ll get no gold from me, only steel!’

‘Then what, my liege, are your plans to lift the siege? The dwarfs have had us encircled for almost a year and show no signs that they intend to leave of their own accord.’ The question came from Lord Ilendril. The grey lord had arrived at the meeting of Tor Alessi’s high and mighty arrayed in his finest cloak and robes, resplendent in the finery his exile in Elthin Arvan had enabled him to acquire. He’d wanted to attract the king’s attention by displaying his wealth and prestige. As he felt the king’s eyes turn to him, Ilendril immediately regretted his decision. The monarch’s gaze was like having a dagger pressed to his throat.

‘My plans are just that,’ the king growled. ‘Mine. Do not think that I have not heard your claims of mastery over the dragons. It reminds me that my father cast you out of Ulthuan for such ideas. It reminds me that when Prince Thoriol, my nephew and heir, lay alone and bleeding on the battlefield, you and your wyrm flew away. I wonder, then, Lord Ilendril, are you a charlatan? Is your mastery perhaps less firm than you claim? I would hope such is the case. It would pain me to think that you abandoned my heir of your own accord.’ The king sneered as he watched the arrogant poise wilt off Ilendril’s face. ‘Your beast is undependable, Ilendril. Your role in my plans is to safeguard the refugee ships. See if you can manage at least that much.’

Thoriol looked up at his uncle from where he sat among the Council of Five, in the seat that had once been Lord Gelthar’s. ‘Refugees? Do you mean to abandon Tor Alessi?’

Caledor laughed. ‘Not one inch are we abandoning to these moles,’ he declared. ‘But we will evacuate the city. My warriors will fight better without the confusion of panicked civilians getting in their way. The people will be moved to the ships and taken to Sith Remora or some other settlement.’ A cunning gleam shone in his eye as he raised one finger. ‘But they won’t be the only ones to leave. Under cover of the evacuation, half the warriors I’ve brought will likewise board ships. They will sail a few leagues down the coast, far enough to be beyond the notice of the dwarfs. Then they will make landfall and march with all haste to assault the besiegers from the rear. As soon as the attack is under way, I will lead a sally from Tor Alessi. The mud-eaters will be caught between us.’ Caledor laughed again. ‘It was very obliging of this High King of the short folk to bring so many of his brutish subjects here. It affords us the chance to wipe them out in one go, rather than ferreting them out of their holes in the mountains.’

‘It is unwise to underestimate them, my liege,’ Thoriol warned.

‘Ever the voice of caution,’ Caledor declared. ‘You are much like your father. That is why you shall have the honour of leading the contingent that takes the dwarfs from behind. I can depend on your judgement. If you do not think there is a real chance for success, then you are to hold back. Unless your forces attack, I will keep my troops inside the walls.’

The king’s expression was almost benign as he nodded at Thoriol. ‘Be wary of the dwarfs if you like, but do not let that wariness dull your eyes to the strengths of your own people. A king must have pride in his kingdom if it is to be prosperous.’

Whatever else the king might have said was forgotten as the entire chamber suddenly began to shake. Dust spilled down from the ceiling and cracks snaked across the walls. A dull, monstrous groan shuddered through the Tower of the Winds, almost drowning out the cries of shock and alarm that echoed through the halls.

Caledor’s face was livid as he rose from the throne and brushed marble dust from his hair. He didn’t join the rush of generals and nobles who flocked to the balcony to see for themselves the validity of the screams and shouts sounding all around them.

He’d expected the dwarfs to keep up their demands for wergild a few days more. That would have allowed the king time enough to bring his own schemes to fruition. The one time he needed the brutes to behave like stubborn children, the miserable creatures decided to play against type and take swift action.

‘Aelis!’ Caledor shouted. ‘Get your people to their ships. Thoriol, embark your troops. The filthy beard-sniffers have forced an acceleration of my plans, but the strategy remains the same.’ The king stumbled as the Tower of the Winds was slammed once more by one of the huge projectiles the dwarfs were hurling at the structure. His eyes blazed with outrage as he regained his footing.

‘The dwarfs are so fond of their hammers and anvils – let us see how they like being caught between the two.’

The colossal grudge throwers growled as their arms snapped upright, casting tonnes of stone far into Tor Alessi. Raised by the dawi just behind the outer wall, the immense trebuchets had no shortage of ammunition, hurling rubble from the wall itself at the city. With expert aim, the artillerists lobbed their projectiles at the targets High King Gotrek had chosen for them – the three tallest towers in the city, the soaring spires of Winds, Sea and Dragon. Hundreds of feet higher than their closest neighbours, the towers were readily visible landmarks, ones that the artillerists had spent months demolishing in their imaginations.

Now they were turning that vision into reality.

Gotrek watched with grim satisfaction as the great blocks of stone slammed into the towers, raining rubble and debris into the streets below. With each impact, he could see the hated banners atop the towers tremble. It amused him to think of Caledor himself shivering away inside whatever hole he’d taken refuge in. Wherever it was, the dawi would drag him out into the light of their vengeance. His only real fear was that the elgi king might escape back to his island realm. The grudge throwers were the only weapons that could strike out into the harbour and menace the ships there, but to do so would mean diverting them away from their demolition of the towers, and that was something too crucial to Gotrek’s battle plan.

While a few of the smaller onagers and mangonels attacked the inner wall, they weren’t expected to batter a path for the dawi. Entry to the city would come from a different quarter, but to hold that breach, the dwarfs needed to keep the elgi from rushing reinforcements to the crucial zone.

The key to accomplishing that purpose was an especially satisfying one for the onlooking throngs of dwarfs. The great towers of Tor Alessi would be brought crashing down. So many centuries they had stood firm and defiant, mocking the warriors who waged thirteen sieges against the city. They wouldn’t survive the fourteenth. The grudge throwers would see to that.

While Gotrek watched, one of the massive stone blocks crashed through the walls of the Tower of the Sea. Flashes of light played about the stone moments before it struck, the reaction of the runes etched into each missile by the runelords to dispel any enchantments the elgi cast to try to fend off the attack. As the stone struck, a cloud of dust exploded from the side of the wounded tower. Already holed in half a dozen places, this last impact was too much for the structure. Roaring like a dying god, the Tower of the Sea went crashing down, spilling its tonnes of stone across the outlying district, smashing neighbouring buildings and blocking entire streets with its enormity.

Gotrek turned his gaze from the fallen tower to watch as the attacks continued against the others. The grudge throwers aimed low, trying to cut the buildings off around their bases, ensuring the most destruction possible when they fell. It was a boon to the dawi that elgi construction owed more to aesthetics than durability. Tor Alessi was suffering now for the fragile compromise its people had made between pragmatism and artistry.

The city would fall, Every dawi assembled outside the wall knew it now. As the Tower of the Dragon came crashing down, the demolition was nearly drowned out by the fierce cries of ‘Khazuk!’ that rose from the mighty throng.

Gotrek looked towards the main gate leading into the city, at the strange crater where the elgi mages had destroyed the battering ram. Without knowing it, the enemy had helped the dawi with their sorcery. They’d made the job of bringing down the gate much simpler.

The High King descended from his view on the captured wall, climbing onto the Throne of Power and letting his hearthguard carry him out onto the field.

When the gates fell, he wouldn’t be found lingering at the rear. Gotrek might not be the first inside Tor Alessi, but he was determined that both dawi and elgi would know that the High King of the Karaz Ankor was there for the final battle.

Lord Ilendril fumed as Malok lifted away from the trembling spires of the Tower of the Winds. The arrogance and temerity of King Caledor was a bitter pill to swallow. Far from the glory and acclaim he’d expected for his contributions to the war, he instead was subjected to the king’s suspicious insinuations.

Looking out across Tor Alessi, Ilendril could see the devastation wrought by the Tower of the Sea as it came smashing down. Entire blocks were smashed flat, buildings crushed like bugs beneath a boot. Chunks of masonry, even entire walls were thrown into the air to come hurtling onto the heads of panicked survivors. The evacuation had started, but far from the orderly enterprise Caledor had planned, it was a chaotic rout, mobs of panicked elves streaming to the waterfront, herding themselves onto the ships designated to bear them away. It was only the presence of the Sea Guard that kept them from mobbing the vessels that were to take Thoriol’s army down the coast to attack the dwarfs from behind.

Thoriol’s army! Ilendril struck his fist against Malok’s scaly neck as he thought of the glory and honours that awaited the feeble prince when he led that attack. An unaccomplished, insignificant nobody whose only achievement was being sired by Imladrik. By all the Cadai, it was insufferable. That whelp leading an army while Ilendril was squandered playing nursemaid to a refugee rabble.

Distracted by his ire, Ilendril didn’t notice when his dragon shifted slightly in its flight. His control over the wyrm was almost complete, but there were slight gaps in his domination – limits that Malok had learned over its centuries of enslavement. If the dragon openly defied Ilendril or tried to rebel, the elf would know it in an instant. So the wyrm was much more cautious than that. It knew it couldn’t expose its master to danger, but the same rule didn’t necessarily apply to itself.

Before Ilendril was aware of what was happening, Malok had flown not out towards the bay, but across the lines of the dawi. Ballistae cast their spears at the huge wyrm, great iron lances with rune-inscribed heads. One of the spears raked across Malok’s side, gouging a deep furrow in the creature’s scaly flesh. Fiery blood spilled from the wound, pelting the walls as the dragon roared in pain and hastily pulled away.

Ilendril screamed, clutching at his own bleeding side, his body suffering the sympathetic stigmata that was the side effect of his enslaving magic. The elf lord’s endurance was considerable, but it was paltry beside the primordial constitution of a dragon. While the asur was yet debilitated by the agony surging through him, the dragon was exploiting the resultant loss of control.

Malok threw its powerful body into a spinning dive. The ferocious drive of wind and gravity caused the straps of the saddle, already weakened by the dwarf spear, to snap. Ilendril was flung from his seat and sent hurtling through the sky.

The wyrm was after Ilendril in an instant, snatching him up in its mighty claws like a hawk swooping on a dove. Malok raked one of its long talons down Ilendril’s body, splitting the elf’s armour and slashing the body beneath. The fang hanging about Ilendril’s neck, the talisman that allowed him to control the dragon, was ripped loose to plummet to the earth far below.

Malok’s baleful eyes glared at the maimed elf who had enslaved it. Tightening its grip, the dragon held the screaming asur tight as it flew towards the refugee ships Ilendril had been tasked to defend. Helpless, Ilendril watched as the wyrm spat its fire onto one of the packed vessels. Hundreds of elves were consumed as flames erupted across the ship, as its sails became fiery shrouds and its decks became a blazing holocaust.

Bellowing its wrath, the dragon set upon a second ship and then a third. As Malok approached a fourth vessel, it noticed that no more screams sounded from the mangled elf it held in its claws. Glaring at Ilendril’s corpse, feeling cheated of its revenge, the dragon cast the body down onto the deck of the ship it had been stalking. The elf lord struck with such force that the body bounced overboard, sinking into the waves.

Malok shrieked, a sound of terrible, bestial triumph, and wheeled away. The horror-struck elves below watched as the rampaging beast winged its way towards the south.

Enslaved for so long, Malok was seeking a lonely place far from dawi and elgi, a place in which it could sleep and brood and nurture its bitter hatred of both.

The best tunnellers in the miners’ guild had excelled themselves, forcing the passages that led from behind the outer wall to the crater left by the elgi wizards. The need for secrecy, the speed with which the shafts had to be cleared, the pressure of working right under the noses of the enemy, all of these had added to the difficulties of their task. Should a single elf scout notice them, should any elgi mage divine their presence, then the entire plan would be undone – most likely in a way that would see the very tunnels they were digging collapse on their heads.

Morgrim reflected on the ghastly moments when it had seemed just such a thing must happen, when the beams overhead appeared to sag beneath the weight of the dawi warriors on the battlefield above. It would have been too conspicuous to leave any gaps in the dwarf lines, too suspicious for a clear path to exist between the dawi and the gate. The miners had accepted the added burden, compensating by using wutroth beams rather than common oak for the tunnel supports. Some of the diggers had even relished the novelty, employing wood commonly reserved for only the most prestigious projects on so mundane a purpose.

Yet, truly, could there be anything more prestigious than helping to break the walls of Tor Alessi and bringing an end to the War of Vengeance at last? Morgrim certainly didn’t think so. There would be honours and glory enough to share when the victory was done and he was determined that the miners’ contribution wouldn’t be forgotten.

From a side passage, Morgrim could see Runelord Morek ambling out into the crater lying before the main gates of Tor Alessi. Morek’s staff hummed with the arcane vibrations of his magic, cloaking him from the eyes of the elgi on the walls above. In the dark of night Ironbreakers had already brought forward one of the Anvils of Doom, depositing it at the far end of the pit. It stood there, black with age, pulsing with the uncanny forces that were the runelord’s art. A feeling of dreadful anticipation pulsed through Morgrim’s veins. Even Gotrek wasn’t privy to the details of what Morek was going to do. All they knew was that the runelord had promised to bring down the gate.

Morek had asked one further thing of Morgrim and Gotrek – that when all was done, when the battle was recorded in the annals of the dawi, that his own role should be forgotten. He offered the key to victory, but the price was his own anonymity. There might be glory for Gotrek and Morgrim, but Morek said there would only be infamy for himself if his role were made known. He would be the lowest of oathbreakers in the eyes of his fellow runelords, a criminal without compare.

Drawing close to the Anvil, Morek slammed his runestaff into the earth beside it. Raising his arms as best he could, the twisted dwarf began to call out in a strange tongue, an ancient variant of Khazalid that was unknown to any outside the order of runesmiths. Eerie letters of fire flashed before his hands, speeding away from his fingers to stream down into the Anvil. The blackened surface of the relic began to glow a dull crimson, turning to a flaming orange as the fiery runes continued to seep down into it.

Morgrim had to shield his eyes when the Anvil turned white-hot. An afterimage of Morek with his hands upraised lingered in his vision. The next instant, the passage was shaken by a tremendous explosion. A thunderous roar rolled down the tunnel, assailing the ears of every dwarf. Mephitic odours wracked their senses, and a sorcerous chill plucked at their beards. Many of the warriors with Morgrim made the signs of Valaya and Grungni, invoking the ancestor gods for forgiveness and protection from what they’d unleashed.

When Morgrim could see again, Morek and the Anvil were gone, obliterated by the forces the runelord had summoned. So too was the gate, ripped asunder by the arcane explosion – not so much as a splinter remained between the immense columns that flanked the once-door.

‘Ladders!’ Morgrim shouted to his troops. At their thane’s command, waves of dwarfs surged out from the side passages and into the crater, raising their ladders and scrambling into the breach. A few arrows shot down at them from the elgi on the walls, but far too few to turn back the tide.

As he rushed through the crater to join his warriors, Morgrim reflected sombrely on the terrible sacrifice Morek had made. Deliberately destroying an Anvil of Doom, risking the unending infamy of his name and the shame of his entire line. It was a hideous prospect, one that Morgrim hoped he would never face. The choice between shame and the welfare of the dawi race.

Balanced against what he’d done, anonymity was the kindest reward Morek Furrowbrow could have hoped for.

From the crater, the dwarfs spilled out into the city. Detachments of crossbows flanked the walls, picking off elgi archers from behind. Axes and hammers rushed to clear the gatehouse, cutting down the garrison before they could mobilise and try to close the breach. Already a great throng of dwarfs was charging across the plain, cascading towards the shattered gate, thousands of warriors eager to at last seize the city that had defied them over so many sieges.

The elgi were waiting for them at every turn, contesting every street. Each building, each square became a scene of unspeakable carnage – a red ruin of heaped bodies, splintered mail and broken blades. Griffons and eagles soared down from the roofs, tearing at the dwarfs with beak and talon. Archers infested every window, loosing arrows until dawi fighters smashed their way into each strongpoint and wrought a final reckoning upon the bowmen with axe and hammer. Phalanxes of spears blocked entire avenues, defying the determined dwarfs, forcing them to smash their way through the stabbing, thrusting steel to close upon the elven warriors.

The dwarfs fought on, paying no heed to their own hurts, forgetting for the moment the dead and dying comrades they left behind as they burrowed their way ever deeper into the city. Grudge throwers smashed a breach through the old wall separating the New City from the Old City, opening the way for the dawi to the harbour and the market districts, to the hill where the great temple of Asuryan stood with its marble roof and gilded columns, to the opulent manors of the merchants and sea-traders who had once brought such prosperity to the city.

Morgrim led his hearthguard through the thick of the fighting, Azdrakghar flashing out in great cleaving blows that left elgi torn and maimed wherever the thane found them. It was when he was bringing his warriors against a regiment of spearmen trying to defend a barricade thrown across the Street of Autumn that Morgrim first heard the cries and shouts rising from dawi outside the walls. He forced himself to focus on the fight at hand, to forget the promise that lay behind those excited shouts, those vengeful roars.

Only when the barricade was taken, when hundreds of elgi spearmen had been killed or routed, did Morgrim really listen to the voices of the dwarfs. The colours of the Phoenix King had risen once again, the dragon and phoenix flying above the great square at the heart of the Old City – the Founders’ Square, where the elgi had set down the first stones of what would become Tor Alessi.

‘Caledor,’ Morgrim growled, wiping the blood from his axe with a cloak he’d ripped from the corpse of an asur captain. ‘The maggot is making a stand.’ In his mind he could see again the elgi king as he duelled Snorri Halfhand and brought the prince to destruction.

‘Beware, Morgrim,’ Khazagrim cautioned. ‘It could be a trick, bait to lure us into a trap.’

Morgrim shook his head. In his gut he knew Khazagrim was wrong. He’d seen the elgi king, seen the arrogance and contempt with which he had fought Snorri’s army. Thick in the fighting, Khazagrim hadn’t taken away the same impression of the Phoenix King that Morgrim had. Caledor wouldn’t try to trick them because the elf didn’t think he needed deceit to conquer enemies so far beneath him.

‘He’ll be there,’ Morgrim declared. ‘He’ll be there to challenge us, to prove himself our better. He thinks he’ll teach the dawi a lesson about his own superiority. That is why he shows his flag, why he tells us where he is.’

Morgrim brought his axe sweeping around, shattering a marble column standing before a herbalist’s shop. ‘We’ll teach the dog a lesson instead, a lesson he can take away with him when he goes down to elgi hell!’

Founders’ Square was a vast expanse sprawling at the centre of the Old City. Markets and workshops fronted onto the square, as did the halls of the various artisan associations and craft-schools. Diamondsmiths and sculptors, enchanters and armourers, silk-weavers and conjure-workers, all had their businesses facing in upon the birthplace of Tor Alessi. The immense municipal hall and the colossal High Library stretched along much of the northern perimeter, their mighty towers staring down upon the market below.

The square itself was tiled with mosaics depicting the legends and heroic history of the asur. Lavish fountains with golden statues and alabaster basins were scattered about the expanse, each fountain devoted to one of the elven gods. The waters bubbling from each statue were coloured to match their respective deity – dark crimson for bloody-handed Khaine, rich azure for the creator-god Asuryan, sombre emerald for the wild huntsman Kurnous.

In the middle of the square, a massive obelisk of granite rose, towering a hundred feet in the air. Down the sides of the obelisk, etched in glyphs of ithilmar, were the names of those asur who’d first settled Tor Alessi. Once, other symbols had flanked those glyphs, sharp dwarfish runes of gold to remember the dawi who had befriended the asur and helped them raise their city. The Khazalid runes had been effaced long centuries ago, carefully excised when the news came to Tor Alessi that Imladrik had been slain.

King Caledor looked up at the obelisk. It was from the summit of that memorial that the king’s banner now flew, declaring to his brutish enemies where he was. Even a dwarf would have enough wit to find him with such a marker to guide them onwards.

The king leaned back in the saddle of his steed, a white charger named Torment. The horse was of the blood of Tiranoc, sired by one of the few remaining stallions of the royal herd of that battered kingdom. The royal stallions of Tiranoc stood sixteen hands high, broader and stouter of build than any other horses in Ulthuan. Their hooves had a hardness to them that was like iron even before they were shod. The bold hearts and sharp minds of the animals were unmatched by any steed born of common stock. Fiercer than a tempest, Torment was the only horse Caledor would deign to ride into battle. When the royal bloodline of Tiranoc’s herd was spent, it would indeed be a sorry day for the highborn of Ulthuan.

‘Soon,’ Caledor whispered into his steed’s ear, feeling the animal’s restlessness. Around him, the chargers of his knights stamped and snorted anxiously. They could smell the smoke and blood on the air. The war horses were dependable enough once battle was joined, but like the warriors mounted upon them, it was the anticipation of conflict that made them uneasy. It was the mark of lowborn blood – the same in horse as it was in elf. It took nobility to truly appreciate war, and the higher the quality of the blood, the more keen that appreciation. Caledor and Torment didn’t feel anxious. No, they looked forward to the coming fight, secure in their understanding that no foe could be their equal, no enemy their master. Doubt was a vice of the common stock, not royal blood.

There were hundreds of knights and horsemen gathered in Founders’ Square. The best and boldest cavalry from Caledor’s fleet and Tor Alessi’s army had been put directly under the king’s command. Supporting them were hundreds of archers positioned in the towers of the municipal hall and the library, scattered across the roofs of the markets and shops. Regiments of swordsmen crowded inside the buildings, ready to join the fray when they were given the signal.

Caledor doubted he would need the infantry. His knights would be enough to cut down the dawi. The filthy mud-eaters seemed to recognise that fact. A few had appeared at the southern end of the square, but they’d withdrawn fast enough when they saw the force arrayed against them. The miserable moles were bold enough in their talk of fighting the Phoenix King, but when they had the opportunity, they soon lost heart.

‘My liege,’ Lady Aelis addressed the king. She’d adopted a mantle of silver chain and ithilmar plate over which she wore a silk surcoat bearing the heraldry of Tor Alessi. The stallion she rode was a decent-enough example of colonial stock, though far inferior to the herds of Ulthuan.

‘My liege,’ Aelis repeated until the king deigned to look at her. ‘I advise that you position more warriors to protect the streets leading down to the bay. The dawi know you are here and they will certainly try to cut off any avenue of escape.’

Caledor glared at her, his face twisting into a sneer. ‘Escape? That sounds like the sort of thing a defeatist might suggest. No, I am here to fight these animals, not run from them. My legacy will be one of courage, not retreat.’ He slapped his armoured hand against the golden breastplate he wore. ‘The Skin of Vaul,’ he declared, ‘forged in the fires of the gods themselves and entrusted to the kings of Ulthuan.’ He tapped a finger against his helm with its great dragon-wings and snarling reptilian face. ‘The Dragonshard,’ he named the ancient relic, ‘sculpted around a scale from Indraugnir himself.’ His hand raised to point at the gleaming crown wrapped about the helm. ‘The Phoenix Crown, the glory of our people and the ten kingdoms. These are the symbols of my power. I did not carry them across the sea to flee at the first twitch of a mud-eater’s whisker!’ He pointed his mailed hand towards the seaward streets. ‘Join your people. Help them escape if that is your intent.’

The king looked away smiling as he saw a great body of dwarfs tromping towards the square. This time the dawi weren’t darting back the way they’d come. This time the enemy was marching to battle.

‘Leave the fighting to warriors,’ Caledor dismissed Aelis. ‘Leave the glory to those worthy of it.’

The warriors of Morgrim Elgidum were the first to march out into the Founders’ Square. Though a few scouts had been there before him, it had been generally agreed that the attack against Caledor should be led by the mighty hero of the dawi.

Despite his conviction that Caledor was too arrogant to run, Morgrim couldn’t shake a sense of unreality when he led his hearthguard out across the tiles, past the bubbling fountain of Isha and towards the waiting line of elgi cavalry. After so long dreaming of this moment, it was hard to come to grips with the fact that the dream had become reality. He, Morgrim Ironbeard, was getting his chance to bring down the king of the elgi.

The elves waited until the dwarfs were a hundred yards out onto the square before launching their attack. Caledor raised his armoured hand, the jewels set into each joint gleaming in the sunlight. Boldly he dropped his hand and gave the signal to charge. With a thunder of hooves, the knights and horsemen galloped across the square. Morgrim could feel the mosaics shivering beneath his boots as the vibrations of the charge shook them.

‘Set shields!’ Morgrim bellowed out. Khazagrim dipped his standard, alerting the hearthguard to their leader’s command. The warriors closed ranks, locking arms and shields with the fighters beside them, forming a single block of dwarfish steel and muscle to oppose the onrushing cavalry.

Arrows whistled down from the towers and roofs on the opposing side of the square, a furious volley designed to break the dwarf formation. A few of the dawi fell to the descending arrows, struck in face or throat. Most of the arrows, however, simply clattered off the thick steel plates of their armour or got caught in the sturdy oak of their shields.

Just as the elves tried to undermine the dwarf strategy, so too did Morgrim loose his own plans to blunt the elgi attack. ‘Give the sign,’ Morgrim shouted into Khazagrim’s ear. The old warrior hefted the thane’s banner high, thrusting it up and down several times in the air. In response, trumpeters hidden in the buildings on the left flank of the square blew a blast of monstrous noise from their instruments. The roaring cachinnation struck when the charge was still many yards away from the dwarf formation. Assailed by the noisy tumult, many of the horses were thrown into panicked confusion. They reared back, stamping their hooves and kicking at the air. Some were bowled over by the horses coming after them, spilling across the square in a miserable tangle of injured mounts and riders.

Not all of the cavalry were undone. The boldest of the steeds managed to maintain their charge, rushing at the dwarfs in a wave of steel barding and silk tabards. At their head, an ivory-gripped lance held before him, was Caledor himself. The Phoenix Crown was dazzling, almost blinding as the king brought his knights smashing into the dawi ranks. Morgrim conceded a grudging respect that the Phoenix King had ensured his foes would recognise him even in the fury of battle.

The elven knights slammed into the dwarfs, slaughtering a dozen in their first rush, the steel-tipped lances driven clean through their thick armour by the momentum of the attack. The locked shields and stubborn resistance of the dawi prevented the charge from punching through to the rearward ranks, however. After that first horrendous crash, the elves found themselves pinned in place by Morgrim’s warriors. The elves didn’t waste time trying to free their lances, but cast the weapons aside the instant their charge faltered. With almost machine-like synchronisation, the knights drew their swords and cast about them at their foes.

Morgrim fended off the blade of one knight, blocking it with the haft of his axe before bringing Azdrakghar swinging around to cleave the leg from the elgi’s horse. As the animal collapsed, he brought the axe chopping down into the knight’s head, splitting helm and skull like a melon.

Turning from his vanquished foe, Morgrim was barely able to avoid the downward slash of another elgi blade. He jerked back, almost stumbling over the horse he’d killed. The thane blinked in shock when he saw the elf behind the slashing blade. ‘Caledor!’ he roared, spitting the name as though it were the vilest of curses.

‘You are the vaunted Elfdoom?’ the elgi king taunted, his words rolling off his tongue in a precise if stilted Khazalid. ‘You are the maggot who killed my brother?’ The king’s blade flashed out once more, slicing across Morgrim’s pauldron and nearly splitting the steel in half. Forged for the Great War against Chaos, Dawnkiller was meant to spill the essence of the mightiest daemons. Before the enchantments woven into the blade, Morgrim’s armour was little more than paper.

‘You are the scum who killed my prince,’ Morgrim snarled back. He lunged at the elf lord, but Caledor kicked his horse, causing Torment to rear and lash out at the dwarf with its steel-shod hooves. One of the flailing hooves cracked against Morgrim’s helm, staggering him and forcing him back.

Caledor moved to exploit the opening, stabbing down with Dawnkiller. The ithilmar blade pierced Morgrim’s shoulder, drawing a ragged cry from the hero, but instead of reeling, he brought Azdrakghar swinging back around. The axe cracked against Caledor’s shield, almost splitting it in two. Morgrim grunted as he tried to pull his blade free, then his breath caught in his throat. The axe was stuck fast, refusing to budge from the rent in the shield.

The elf king cried out in pain – the impact of Morgrim’s axe had nearly broken his arm. Digging his spurs into the flanks of Torment, Caledor brought the animal spinning around, dragging Morgrim after it. The dwarf was battered as the horse’s stomping hooves pounded against him, but he held fast to the haft of his axe. Even as the hooves knocked teeth from his mouth, turned his nose to pulp and crushed one of his ears, he maintained his hold. At last, as the animal’s fury waned, Morgrim set his feet and, exerting the full limit of his strength, wrenched his axe free.

Or so he thought. As Caledor turned to face him once more, Morgrim saw that he hadn’t freed Azdrakghar at all – the elf king had simply released his shield, leaving it caught on the axe. Glaring at the thane, Caledor prepared to ride down the dwarf.

The thunderous roar of hundreds of voices howling the dawi war-cry boomed across the square. Dwarf warriors in their thousands had converged upon the battle. They swiftly spread out, surrounding the elgi king and his knights. More dawi drove in from the sides of the square, pushing before them the infantry Caledor had kept in reserve. Defying the arrows still whistling down at them from the roofs, the dwarfs were forcing their foes out, pushing them towards the fountains and the obelisk.

Caledor arrested Torment’s charge, managing to maintain control over the horse even in the fury of the dwarf war-cry. The elf king kept Dawnkiller pointed at Morgrim and slowly turned his head, staring with consternation at the masses of bearded warriors all around him. Morgrim’s bloodied face pulled back into a smile. Caledor was trapped and he was being forced to face that fact.

‘So this is how it ends,’ Caledor growled at Morgrim. ‘A lion brought down by jackals.’

‘No, a dragon felled by a king,’ a grim voice called out from the direction of the broken gate. Both Morgrim and Caledor turned to see the hearthguard forcing their way through the press of dwarf warriors. Behind them, carried aloft upon the shoulders of his thronebearers, seated upon his ancient Throne of Power, was High King Gotrek Starbreaker.

When his thronebearers reached the square, Gotrek bade them lower him to the ground. Tightening his hold on the haft of his axe, the king stepped out from among his hearthguard.

Caledor sneered at the dwarf king. ‘I had imagined that the High King would be taller,’ he mocked. ‘Am I to understand that you mean to challenge me?’

‘If you have the spine for it,’ Gotrek snarled back in the rudimentary Eltharin he’d learned from Forek many years ago. The way the elf smiled at his pronunciation only fed the fury boiling inside him. ‘You killed my son, elgi. If you’d paid the wergild demanded by my kingdom, I would have been obliged to let you live.’ Gotrek spat at the ground beneath Caledor’s steed. ‘Now I am under no such obligation.’

Caledor slowly dismounted. He looked into Torment’s eyes, then with a shout and a swat of his hand against the animal’s flank, he sent the horse galloping back towards the municipal hall where the elgi still held command. He watched the horse for a moment, then turned back towards Gotrek. ‘What are the terms you offer, dwarf? What do I gain when I kill you, other than the pleasure of removing one more mole from this world?’ He looked around at the glowering faces that lined the square. His surviving knights had withdrawn into a circle, presenting swords and shields to their enemies, but the dwarfs were making no effort to close upon them. Around the fountains of Mathlann and Vaul, hundreds of elgi soldiers were being squeezed by a ring of dawi axes. Even there, the fighting had stopped. All eyes were turned towards the two kings.

Gotrek unlimbered the axe strapped to his back. It was the most potent and venerable weapon in his armoury, a relic from the time of legend. The Axe of Grimnir, an heirloom from one of the ancestor gods, an artefact hoary with myth and history. As the High King took the weapon up in his hands, the ancient runes etched into its blade began to pulse with a violent crimson glow.

‘Kill me, and there will be no grudgement,’ Gotrek declared. ‘You and your people will be allowed to leave with your lives.’ He raised his hand, stifling the protest he saw in Morgrim’s face. ‘No dawi will defy the words of their High King.’

Caledor nodded, then abruptly sprang forwards. Dawnkiller licked out, raking across the meteoric iron of Gotrek’s mail and striking sparks from the rune-etched armour. ‘Fair enough,’ the elf said. ‘Let’s have this done, shall we?’

Gotrek cracked the butt of his axe against Caledor’s leg, driving the enemy king back. Then he tried to press his attack, bringing the Axe of Grimnir spinning about in a whirling sweep. The elf nimbly darted aside, retaliating with a gruesome jab that notched the dwarf’s ear and sent blood coursing down his neck.

‘Surely you can do better than that?’ Caledor said.

‘I intend to,’ Gotrek growled back. The Axe of Grimnir flashed out in a murderous arc, striking for the elgi’s legs. Caledor leapt over the strike, slashing down at the dwarfish axe. The impact unbalanced Gotrek, causing him to stagger forwards. The elf cracked Dawnkiller’s pommel against the back of Gotrek’s helm, provoking a further stagger.

Gotrek could feel the eyes of his ancestors, the eyes of Snorri, watching him as he reeled from Caledor’s strike. The thought brought him spinning back around, slashing out with the Axe of Grimnir even as the elf king moved to exploit his foe’s loss of balance. Caledor twisted to one side, fright on his features as the axe ripped across his waist and tore away his silk surcoat.

The High King of the Karaz Ankor would not be humiliated by this elgi. Gotrek wouldn’t dishonour his ancestors in such fashion. He wouldn’t allow the memory of Snorri Halfhand to become a mockery, to force his son’s spirit to wander Gazul’s halls lost and unavenged!

With a bestial roar, Gotrek turned his stagger into a charge, rushing at Caledor. A furious cascade of blows forced the elf into retreat, driving him back across the mosaics. Gotrek sneered as he watched Caledor’s boots scrape across the face of ancient elgi heroes. That was the difference between elgi and dawi: the dawi honoured their ancestors, the elgi stepped on them.

The Axe of Grimnir raked down the blocking blade of Dawnkiller, both weapons seeming to scream as sparks flashed from them. Gotrek felt the tremble of Caledor’s resistance rush down his own arm. Agility, finesse, these were the assets of the elgi, not strength and endurance. That failing would seal the fate of the Phoenix King.

With a hiss, Caledor swung away from Gotrek, freeing Dawnkiller and twisting away before the dwarf could bring his axe chopping back around. The elf leapt away, hopping onto the alabaster basin of one of the square’s many fountains. The water that lapped about his armoured feet was dyed a vivid crimson and the golden statue that loomed above him was a grisly, savage-looking god with red water spilling from his snarling mouth.

‘Do not look to your gods for help, tall-ears!’ Gotrek snarled. He thrust up at Caledor, his axe missing the elf as he twisted away and instead cleaving a great gouge in the side of the basin. Gotrek cried out in sudden pain as Caledor brought Dawnkiller flashing back around, slashing the sword across the back of the dwarf’s helm.

The meteoric iron was gashed by the blow, but even Dawnkiller was unable to penetrate the protective runes that defended the High King. A few wisps of hair were all that clung to Caledor’s blade when he pulled it out from Gotrek’s helm.

Bellowing in fury, Gotrek brought the Axe of Grimnir crashing against Caledor’s shin. The gilded plate, despite the vaunted enchantments woven into it, split apart beneath the blow. The dwarf grinned when he saw blood boil up from beneath the cleft armour.

The next instant, Gotrek was knocked back, his nose split by a kick from Caledor’s steel boot. He blinked as red pain seared across his vision, spat as the taste of his own blood streamed down into his mouth. He glared up at the elf, now circling above him on the rim of the basin. Caledor matched his gaze with one equally savage.

‘That was almost admirable,’ Caledor said, dabbing at his injured shin with a strip torn from his surcoat. Wincing in pain, he stuffed the silk down the rent in his armour, trying to stop the blood leaking from his body. When he spoke to Gotrek, however, it was with a scornful bravado. ‘This duel might be interesting after all. Much more memorable than the one I had with your son. What was his name again?’

Hearing the elf mocking his dead son sent daggers of hate stabbing into Gotrek’s brain. He trembled, feeling every muscle in his body engorged with the magnitude of his fury. Snarling, he lunged at his enemy, all craft and care abandoned in his bloodthirsty urge to kill.

Caledor was ready for him. Spinning around, he raked Dawnkiller across Gotrek’s arm, slashing across the meteoric iron. The armour of Gotrek’s gauntlet, however, wasn’t so thick and ancient as the rest of his vestment and when Dawnkiller reached it, Caledor gave it a vicious twist. The turning steel ripped open Gotrek’s hand, sending two of his fingers leaping in the air.

‘Ah, yes,’ Caledor grinned. ‘Halfhand was what they called him.’

The elf had expected Gotrek to reel back in pain after his mutilation. He wasn’t prepared when the dwarf spun back around and brought the Axe of Grimnir licking at his belly. Caledor was able to turn aside, but the blow caught him just the same, cleaving deeply into his knee. He cried out in agony as his leg crumpled under him.

The High King glared up at his reeling foe, vicious satisfaction in his eyes as he watched Caledor’s blood dripping down into the fountain. ‘Snorri Halfhand, son of Gotrek Starbreaker,’ Gotrek snarled at his enemy. ‘Felled by a treacherous elgi king unworthy to cross blades with a grobi.’ He brought his axe flashing around once more.

Even injured, Caledor was able to bring Dawnkiller flashing out to intercept the descending axe. Again, the two weapons shrieked as the kings ground them against one another, striving to overwhelm the might of their foe.

‘Your people are unworthy of us,’ Caledor declared. ‘What right have you to dare to contest the destiny of the asur? You should be honoured that we thought enough of you to let you see the majesty of our accomplishments!’

Gotrek ducked as Caledor brought Dawnkiller slashing at his head. The enchanted blade ripped across his helm once more, this time carving a deep notch in its side. Clenching his teeth against the pain from his mangled hand, fighting to keep his fingers firm on the haft of his axe despite the blood streaming down them, Gotrek struck back at his foe.

Caledor again tried to twist away. Even with his injured leg, the elf’s agility might have served him once more if his foot hadn’t settled in the notch the Axe of Grimnir had carved into the basin. Gotrek felt a thrill of anticipation when he saw his enemy unbalanced. It was only a heartbeat, only the briefest of moments, but it was enough. The Axe of Grimnir, impossible to dull, impossible to defy, slammed into Caledor’s side. No glancing blow but a solid impact that made Gotrek’s arms quiver. He could feel the golden armour break beneath that impact, he could hear the sharp crack as he split the elf’s ribs.

Caledor slumped from the lip of the basin down into the crimson waters of the fountain. Now a darker red stained the mouth of Khaine as the Phoenix King’s blood dripped down into the pool and was drawn up into the golden statue. Caledor stared in shock as Gotrek climbed into the fountain after him, the king’s blood splashed across the Axe of Grimnir.

‘You’ve drowned both our kingdoms in blood,’ Gotrek growled at his enemy. ‘But for your scornful pride, none of this had to happen.’ He raised his axe on high, clasping it with both hands. Blood from his cut fingers dripped down onto the prostrate Caledor’s face.

‘Elthin Arvan is yours,’ Caledor moaned. ‘My kingdom will pay the wergild you ask. I will make full restitution for your losses.’

Gotrek glared down into the wounded king’s eyes. He imagined the scene, that long-ago day when this villain had stood over his dying son and cut off his hand as a trophy to carry back to Ulthuan. Any semblance of pity was crushed in the High King’s hate. ‘Ask the gods for mercy. You’ll find none in me.’

The Axe of Grimnir came chopping down, striking Caledor in the side of his neck. Bright arterial blood sprayed from the elf king’s wound. The dying monarch clutched at his neck as though he might staunch the ebbing of his life with his own hands. It was a futile effort. Soon the gushing blood slowed to a trickle and Caledor II, Phoenix King of Ulthuan, collapsed in the red waters of the fountain. Above him, the golden statue of Khaine spat out a stream of royal blood.

The awed silence that had held the onlooking elgi and dawi crumbled as Caledor fell. From the elves, a terrible wail arose. Staring in stunned horror, the elgi watched as Caledor’s killer reached down and plucked the Phoenix Crown from the dead king’s head.

‘Let this be the end of it,’ Gotrek shouted, holding the crown high in his maimed hand. ‘Let this be an end to the killing! I claim the crown of Caledor as restitution, as recompense for all that the Karaz Ankor has endured, for all of our dead, for all of our crippled!’ The High King looked over at Morgrim, cast his eyes across the throng of dwarf warriors gathered in the square. His gaze hardened as he looked again at the elves. ‘Go to your ships, elgi. Leave the Old World. There is no place for you here.

‘There never was.’

EPILOGUE

Thoriol stared back at Tor Alessi from the deck of his ship. Smoke billowed from the burning buildings. The broken stumps of towers reared into the sky like shattered teeth. The palaces on the hill overlooking the bay were little more than heaps of rubble, smashed to ruin by the dwarfish siege engines. He could see elves still making their way down to the harbour flanked by escorts of armoured dawi. The dwarfs were taking no chances, it seemed, that any asur would try to stay behind. Whatever their own feelings, they were following the decree of High King Gotrek to the letter. No elf would be harmed as long as they didn’t try to remain in Elthin Arvan.

Elthin Arvan. Despite all the blood and treasure that had been spent trying to maintain the colonies, in the end they’d been lost just the same. Bitterness and regret tried to seize him, but all he could manage was a woeful weariness. He felt like a mourner watching as the body of a loved one was consigned to the flames.

More than just the colonies had been lost, however. Ulthuan had lost its king. Caledor II, the great warrior, cut down by Gotrek Starbreaker, the Phoenix Crown taken away as a trophy by the dwarfs. Briefly, Thoriol had entertained the idea of landing the warriors his uncle had placed under his command far down the coastline and trying to intercept the dawi before they could return to Karaz-a-Karak. The thought of losing the Phoenix Crown, of having such a priceless relic captured and carried off by an enemy, was almost too much to bear.

His fellow asur thought so too. They’d urged him to strike back, to carry the fight back to the dwarfs, to reclaim the crown whatever the cost. However suicidal the effort, reclaiming the crown of the Phoenix Kings was worthy of the effort.

Thoriol had almost laughed at that. The Phoenix Crown was naught but a symbol, the symbol of the ten kingdoms and Ulthuan. What good was the symbol if what it represented were brought to ruin?

The prince turned from his last view of Tor Alessi and faced the emissary who had journeyed from Lothern to bring tidings to Caledor that his kingdom was under attack. Not the far-flung colonies of the wilderness but the homeland itself.

When the galley from Ulthuan encountered refugee ships fleeing out to sea, when it found Tor Alessi being evacuated, the vessel had brought about and flown the pennant of Caledor’s steward. The hulking troop ship Thoriol had embarked upon came about and rendezvoused with the galley, taking aboard the messenger from Lothern. The prince was surprised to find that the king’s steward had come in person. Lord Caradryel of House Reveniol.

‘Can we return in time?’ Thoriol asked the steward, not for the first time.

Caradryel’s face was grim. ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘There are certainly more optimistic ways to describe the situation, courtly words I could employ to downplay the catastrophe, but I respect you too much for such games. Besides, there isn’t time for the usual courtesies.’

‘Malekith.’ Thoriol hissed the name, his fingers digging into his palms. It had been centuries since the usurper had dared threaten the shores of Ulthuan. The menace posed by him and his druchii traitors had seemed a dwindling one, as they faded from a renegade nation to small cabals of pirates and marauders. The asur had hounded them ever deeper into the wilds of Naggaroth, a land of such malignant hostility that it seemed nothing could survive there.

Caradryel nodded. ‘The druchii have survived. No, more than that. In their own twisted way they have flourished in the Land of Chill. Their numbers have grown. They’ve raised new generations of traitors out in the wilds.’

‘While we fought the dwarfs, Malekith was watching and waiting,’ Thoriol said. ‘He feigned weakness, letting us think him beaten. All the while he was raising new armies in secret, biding his time until Ulthuan was fully engaged against the dawi. Then, like a slinking serpent, the host of Naggaroth struck our homeland.’

‘The druchii have raised the fortress of Anlec once more with their foul magics,’ Caradryel said. ‘They have landed warriors on the Blighted Isle. Even the loudest voices crying for calm, claiming these are naught but pirates, have been forced to admit it is a full-out invasion.’ Caradryel fingered the ring he wore, the emblem of the Phoenix King emblazoned upon it. ‘When we need him most, Caledor is lost to us. Who will lead the asur into battle without him? Who will stand up to the malice of Naggaroth?’

Thoriol shook his head. ‘My uncle wasn’t the kind to lead anyone. He could command, he could coerce and demand, but he couldn’t lead. All his life he lived in the shadow of my grandfather and, in the end, it was as a shadow of my grandfather he died. A warrior like him has courage and he has determination, but he lacks the vision and the wisdom to be a conqueror.’

‘You are wiser than your uncle,’ Caradryel said. ‘You have his courage, but you have your father’s wisdom.’

‘Do I?’ Thoriol asked. ‘Even if I were certain, even if I were everything you believe me to be, I couldn’t take the crown. The people would see me as naught but my uncle’s shadow. They would see in me the echo of the failures that brought us to this calamity. Ulthuan needs a new king to lead her, not Caledor III. I wonder if there isn’t a curse against the blood of House Tor Caled, if the Witch King’s spite hasn’t infected our souls and made us poisonous to all we hold dear.’

‘Fear the things you know and let the unknown attend itself,’ Caradryel advised. ‘Ulthuan needs a king. We need the unity and determinacy that only a king can provide.’

‘I agree,’ Thoriol said, smiling as he set his hand on Caradryel’s shoulder. ‘That is why when we return to Ulthuan I shall advise the Council of Princes, and any others who might care to listen, that in these dark times we need a king who can unite, not simply one who can win battles. I will advise them that there is only one highborn to my knowledge who can bring together the factions and divisions in our society that were caused by my uncle. That asur is you, Caradryel. You have the confidence of my mother and her supporters, but as my uncle’s steward you will also have the loyalty of the late king’s court.’

The colour drained out of Caradryel’s face. He was clearly horrified by the prospect. ‘But… I… I am no king.’

‘That is why you must become one,’ Thoriol said. ‘It is those who covet the crown most who are least worthy of it.’ Bitterness gripped the prince’s features. ‘But you’ll need a new crown. Leave the old one to the dwarfs. Let its loss be a lesson to our people that pride has its price.’

Morgrim tipped his tankard as a regiment of axemen passed him in the street. A bit of the amber liquid sloshed down the side of the pewter cup, spilling onto his boots. The thane frowned as he considered the wasted ale. Before capturing the elgi city, the dawi warriors had ransacked their own baggage train, fortifying themselves with beer until the stores were all but depleted. Too many novices among the army – they thought to replenish the stores with what they captured from the elves. Morgrim hoped they had a taste for thin elven wines, otherwise it was going to be a terribly dry march back to the Karaz Ankor.

When the axemen passed, Morgrim continued his march towards the harbour. Every step he looked at the crumbling splendour of Tor Alessi. More than simply the ruin of war, the city seemed to be visibly withering before his eyes. The beauty and lustre of its palaces and pavilions were wilting, unable to suffer the harsh glow of conquest. Morgrim had seen it happen before, in the other cities the dwarfs had conquered. Once the elgi were gone, they seemed to take with them the essence of the places they’d built. The glamour, the wondrous enchantment dissipated. It almost seemed that Tor Alessi was ageing in front of him. Soon it would be just another lifeless, haunted place, like Oeragor and the others. Even if the dwarfs wanted to preserve them, to keep the elgi cities for their own, they wouldn’t be able to stop the decay. When the last elf abandoned them, the soul was cut from their cities, leaving behind only a dead shell.

Morgrim reached the end of the street, the harbour opening out before him. A great throng of dawi warriors was gathered about the docks. Earlier this district had echoed with cheers and catcalls, the boisterous revelry of the victorious. Now, however, there was only a sombre silence. The last of the elf ships was pulling out into the bay, her sails unfurled to catch the wind that would speed her back to her island kingdom.

The dwarf who’d been christened Elgidum could readily appreciate the mood of the warriors. The thrill of victory was leaving them. As they watched that last elf ship depart, a new thought had entered their minds. Perhaps it had occurred to some of them before, but for many of them it was the first time they’d been forced to confront the question. The war was over – what would they do now? Many of these warriors had been born and raised in conflict; they knew nothing else. So long had they been focused on driving the elgi from the Old World that now they held that dream in their hands, they didn’t know what to do with it. None of them had planned for what sort of future lay beyond this day.

The war had changed the dawi. Morgrim recognised that fact every time he looked into the faces of the new generations. They’d been tempered upon the anvil of battle and suckled at the teat of hate. If anything, they were more dour and unforgiving than those who had come before. The Slayer Cult Forek Grimbok had founded was emblematic of what the dwarfs had allowed themselves to become: more obsessed with atoning for their mistakes than recognising and fixing them.

Such would be the kingdom Morgrim would one day inherit from his uncle. Would he be able to lead it into a new golden age, or would he simply be there to watch it as it continued to fade?

As the sword wound in his side sent a new flare of pain coursing through his body, Morgrim wondered if Imladrik had foreseen all of this that day so long ago when they’d met outside the walls of Tor Alessi for one last pathetic try at peace.

How different it all might have been if he’d allowed himself to listen to his friend that day.

Am I dead?

The thought echoed through Liandra’s mind. It seemed an absurd question to ask. Simply being able to form the thought should have been answer enough. Yet she couldn’t be certain. She felt detached from her own body, and what little sense of it she possessed was cold and distant. She could see and she could hear and she could smell, but these sensations appeared removed from her body. She seemed to be staring down at herself, watching as she was carried down a winding forest trail. Strange shapes flickered among the trees, recalling to her the grisly things that had risen from the forest to destroy King Varnuf’s army.

Through her haze of confusion, she focused upon the one carrying her. He was a tall elf, arrayed in buckskin and a cloak of leaves, a deer-hide hood with attached antlers covering most of his head and face. It was more some uncanny instinct than anything about his appearance that sent hate surging through her body.

‘Druchii,’ Liandra hissed through her cold lips. She tried to twist out of the elf’s grip, but found that the effort was beyond her numb body.

The elf carrying her stopped. He lowered his face, staring down at her. His features were hard, weathered by a life in the wilds. His eyes had the same fey quality as that of Aismarr, though with an even more pronounced remoteness about them.

‘Druchii,’ the elf repeated, as if trying to recall the meaning of the word. At last he nodded his head. ‘Yes, I think I must have been.’ He peered more closely at Liandra. ‘I recall a sorceress named Drutheira. She was precious to me once, but somehow the memory of her refused to fade with all the rest. It was that memory which led me to you. I could sense you were there when she died.’

‘Then you are druchii,’ Liandra accused, yet even as she did she found it hard to remember the root of her hate. The memories of her mother dying in a corsair raid, of her own near-death at the hands of a druchii, these were less intimate now than they had been – like things she’d heard in a story rather than the trauma of her childhood.

‘I am Sevekai,’ the elf corrected her. ‘Soon, perhaps not even that.’ He nodded his head to the path ahead of them. For the first time Liandra noted the curious turns their route took, as though the forest were bending itself around them. Oaks would be replaced with ash and yew in a heartbeat, bushes would vanish, brooks would dissolve. It was less as if they moved along the path and more as if the path flowed around them.

‘Am I dead?’ Liandra wondered, this time articulating her question.

Sevekai smiled at her. ‘We must all die to be reborn,’ he said. ‘Druchii and asur, we must all cut away what we have been. We must go beyond what we were and become what we must be.’

They reached the end of the path, entering a vast clearing. Liandra managed to lift her head, astonished to see so many elves gathered in this place. Most were arrayed in the same primitive fashion as Sevekai, and many had that same fey look in their eyes. Although nearly all of them were asur, here and there the odd druchii stood among them – apparently without distinction.

Ahead of them, a great wall of branches and thrones rose up, like the rampart of some fantastic fortress. There was a light beyond that barrier, a light profoundly warm and inviting. Somehow, Liandra knew that some of those gathered in the clearing around her had been waiting here for centuries to step into that light.

‘Your trial is ended, Liandra of House Athinol. And with it, our journey begins,’ Sevekai said. ‘We will die and be reborn in the light of the forest.’

As Liandra watched, the wall of branches began to untwine, folding back upon itself to expose the light beyond. The heart of the forest.

‘What will we become?’ Liandra asked Sevekai.

‘What the forest wishes us to become,’ he answered. ‘The protectors and watchers, the guardians who will preserve it against axe and flame. Defenders who can recognise danger with more cleverness than beasts and with more immediacy than spirits.

‘We will become the asrai.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax, the End Times novel Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang, the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Time of Legends: The Black Plague series. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000.

An extract from The End Times: The Curse of Khaine.

At some point lost in the depths of time someone had called it the Black Tower. Perhaps it had been black then, and perhaps it had been merely a tower. Now it was the highest pinnacle at the centre of Naggarond. The sprawling fortress had grown hundreds of outer fortifications and buttresses, spawned a warren of alleys and streets, rooftop passages and arcing bridges, becoming a settlement unto itself where the only law was the shifting will of the Witch King, alliances were fleeting and death a constant risk.

Its walls were festooned with the heads and corpses of the thousands that had displeased Malekith over the preceding millennia. Some were hung upon hooks and chains, others in nooses and gibbets. Hundreds were skeletons, preserved by dire magic, but dozens were more recent, mouldering flesh clinging to bones gnawed by the clouds of harpies that circled over the bastion seeking new victims to scavenge.

The Black Tower.

A name filled with more grief and terror than three simple words could describe, etched into the last memories of the unfortunates upon the wall, burned into the agony of those still writhing in the dungeons that were dug into the bedrock beneath the high walls and banner-wreathed ramparts.

None remembered who had first named it, not even Malekith himself as he sat upon his iron throne in a grand hall atop the tallest keep. He did remember a time when Naggarond had not existed, one of only a handful of beings across the entire world.

He had grown up in the Black Tower, the grim atmosphere overshadowed by the brooding presence of his father, Aenarion, and the wicked, bloody machinations of his mother, Morathi. His opponents had claimed that those decades had laid a similar darkness upon his heart.

The Witch King no longer possessed lips, but the irony of history would have caused them to twist into a cruel smile. A face ravaged by holy fire contorted beneath hot iron in an approximation of humour, the sort of humour that delighted in looking out of the window at the heads of a dozen generals who had failed Malekith during the recent war against the barbarous northmen. He viewed them now, taking satisfaction from the screams that had filled this chamber as their bodies had been split apart by dark magic and heated blades.

He looked out past these tokens of his anger, to the surrounding fortress and the high curtain walls beyond. Past them dark shadows pierced the sky, none quite as tall as the Black Tower, shrouded in the dismal chill mists of Naggaroth.

Naggarond.

But this was not the city of his birth, though the Black Tower had been his childhood home. That honour belonged to a fallen place, razed and raised again and again throughout the turning epochs, built upon the blood-soaked soil of ancient Nagarythe.

Anlec.

Capital of Aenarion, once the strongest city in the world, shaming even Karaz-a-Karak of the dwarfs. Anlec, envy of Ulthuan, which had fallen in battle only once, and that had been to Malekith himself and allies within the walls.

All now was ruin. The Black Tower was all that remained of Anlec. The memory was sharp even though six thousand years old.

The storm-wracked seas crashed against a harsh shore of rock pinnacles, foaming madly. The skies were in turmoil, blackened by dark magic. Through the spume and rain dark, massive shapes surged across the seas, towering edifices of battlement and wall.

The castles of Nagarythe followed in the wake of the largest floating citadel, upon the highest tower of which stood Malekith. The lashing rain steamed from his armour as he turned at the sound of Morathi’s voice from the archway behind him.

‘This is where we flee to?’ she said, anger flashing in her eyes. ‘This cold, bleak land?’

‘They will not follow us here,’ replied the Witch King. ‘We are the Naggarothi – we were born in the north and in the north we will be born again. This land, bleak as it is, shall be ours. Naggaroth.’

‘To build a new kingdom?’ sneered Morathi. ‘To accept your defeat and start afresh as if Nagarythe had never existed?’

‘No,’ replied Malekith, flames leaping from his iron body. ‘We will never forget that which has been taken from us. Ulthuan belongs to me. If it takes a thousand years, ten thousand years, I will claim my rightful place as king. I am the son of Aenarion. It is my destiny.’

Time – mortality – was a concern for lesser beings. Millennia meant nothing to the Witch King. The tally of false Phoenix Kings that had been crowned and fallen over the course of Malekith’s life could not be numbered on two hands and he had greeted the death of each with little regard.

Sometimes he lost entire days reliving the events of his past, withdrawing into his thoughts when the burning agony of his physical shell became too much to bear. The temptation was in him again to reflect on ages past, not to escape pain, but to alleviate the boredom that gnawed at his wits.

‘My king?’

Malekith turned his gaze back from the window and his contemplations. It was Ezresor that had spoken, though it took the Witch King a moment to focus and remember his name. Malekith’s oldest agent flinched as the burning stare of his master fell upon him.

‘You have a question?’ Malekith’s voice was a rasp, edged with the scrape of metal and crackle of flames. ‘A comment, perhaps?’

‘You were about to tell us your will,’ said Venil, assassin-turned-advisor, patron of many pirate fleets, still known as the Chillblade.

Fire flared through the cracks in Malekith’s armour, reacting to his displeasure, forcing Venil to take a step back, face flushed with the sudden heat.

‘Is that so?’ Malekith moved his attention to the last of the triumvirate.

Kouran met the flaming stare of his lord without a flicker of movement. Malekith stood more than a head taller than most of his minions, but Kouran was almost his equal in presence. Grim-faced, dark-eyed, he was surrounded by an air of chilling hostility in contrast to the burning iron of his lord. Alone of the three council members, Kouran was armed and armoured – the only individual in the world Malekith trusted with a blade close at hand. The captain held his halberd, Crimson Death, to one side, the blade symbolically averted from his king. While Malekith’s war plate and scale were wreathed with heat, the black steel of Kouran’s armour was like oil, shifting constantly with the trapped souls of sacrifices.

‘The prosecution of the war, the pursuit against the one they call Valkia and the hunt for your mother,’ Kouran prompted without hesitation. The captain had become perhaps too comfortable with Malekith’s lapses of focus, but the Witch King knew that alone of all his subjects Kouran would not use such information against him.

‘Why is Ebnir not here? I would hear from the Soulflayer about the state of my armies and the forces opposed to them.’

‘He is dead, your majesty,’ said Ezresor. ‘As I just informed you.’

The spymaster’s tone irritated Malekith. Insolence. Not enough to warrant death, that would be wasteful, but in pressing times control had to be total. Censure needed to be swift and obvious. The Witch King gave the slightest of nods to Kouran, who knew well enough what his master required.

The captain smashed a gauntleted fist into Ezresor’s face, bloodying his nose and sending him flailing to the floor. Widening his stance ready for a kick, Kouran looked back to his king but received a shake of the head.

‘Of course he is dead,’ said Malekith. ‘He is not stupid. He allowed the watch tower at Vartoth to fall and then compounded the error by leading a host of my warriors onto the glaciers to be slain by these hairy wretches from the Wastes. I am sure when the battle turned against him he threw himself on his own blade, or at least allowed one of the northmen to gut him like a pig, rather than face the fate he knew would await him in my dungeon.’

Ezresor pushed to his feet, uncertain, and shared a glance with Venil. The spymaster wiped the blood from his lip with the cuff of his robe and bowed in apology.

‘Hellebron has not answered my summons,’ said Malekith.

‘She fights in Har Ganeth still,’ said Ezresor. Malekith was pleased that his counsellor offered fact rather than unrequested opinion.

‘The city is nothing but ruins,’ added Venil. ‘The temples to Khaine have been thrown down.’

‘Pride keeps her there,’ said Malekith, understanding the motive of the hag queen better than most. ‘She was humiliated and now she salves her embarrassment with the blood of stragglers and the lost. I will indulge her a while longer.’

‘Forgive my surprise, majesty, but there are lords and ladies that have refused summons and paid dearly for the affront.’ Venil licked his lips and chose his next words with care. ‘I would not wish Hellebron to become a bad example to others.’

‘Hellebron is too useful to have killed,’ Malekith said bluntly. ‘I’m not sure there is anyone capable of the feat even if I desired her death, and I cannot spare another army.’

‘Shadowblade…’ suggested Kouran.

‘Is an uncertain weapon at the moment,’ Malekith replied. ‘He answers to me in this world, but his loyalty is to Khaine, and Hellebron is yet the ranking mistress to the Lord of Murder. There is little to be gained by asking of him such taxing questions at this time. Hellebron will return in time. There is no need to yank the leash just yet.’

‘There is division in Ulthuan, your majesty,’ Venil said with some glee. ‘Prince Imrik of Caledor has quit the court of the absent Phoenix King, having exchanged harsh words with Prince Tyrion about his claim to be regent in Finubar’s absence. The Dragon of Cothique, it seems, will not be able to draw upon the dragons of Caledor in his defence of the realm.’

‘I am sure Tyrion will prevail, even without the dragon princes,’ said Malekith.

‘As to the matter of the Hag Sorceress, master?’ ventured Ezresor. ‘She holds court in Ghrond, perhaps believing that you will not dare confront her in her own convent.’

‘Perhaps?’ Malekith lingered on the word. It suggested speculation, and in speculating it was possible that Ezresor thought there would be cause for Malekith’s mother to believe herself safe from his retribution.

‘We have had no direct contact with Ghrond for many years, your majesty,’ Ezresor added quickly. ‘It is hard to be certain of anything. It is unlikely, but your mother may be dead.’

‘No, she is very much alive, you can be sure of that,’ said Malekith. ‘When death finally catches up with Morathi the world will hear her screams of disappointment, mark my words. Do you not think I will know when she has perished? She gave me her life-force, sustained me in my darkest hour and guided me through the many tribulations that I faced. She is as much a part of me as this armour.’

Venil stroked his chin, his mood contemplative.

‘It was not wholly the fault of Ebnir that we received no warning of the northlanders’ attack. The loss of one watch tower could have been prevented had the seers at Ghrond foretold the incursion.’ He paused, licked his lips again and spoke slowly. ‘It seems unlikely that the Convent of Sorceresses would choose to abandon their duties on a whim, so we must be forced to conclude that the oversight was deliberate.’

‘Who could command the convent to betray their lord in such fashion?’ asked Ezresor.

‘Cease this embarrassing performance,’ snapped Malekith, slamming a fist onto the arm of his throne, throwing up a shower of sparks. ‘If you have an accusation to level against my mother, make it plain to me.’

‘Apologies, majesty,’ said Ezresor, bowing low with a flicked glance towards Kouran. ‘I am certain Morathi deliberately kept word of the Chaos attack, ensuring that we would be poorly prepared.’

‘And why do you suppose she would do such a thing?’ said Kouran. ‘Ghrond cannot stand alone against all that the Chaos Wastes vomit forth.’

‘Do not underestimate the nihilism of spite,’ said Venil. ‘For longer even than our lord she has coveted the rule of Ulthuan. Perhaps she sees some advantage in letting Naggaroth fall to disaster.’

All three advisors turned to Malekith, remembering that they spoke in his presence. None of them uttered a word but cast their eyes down at the floor and fell silent.

‘You were speaking of my mother,’ Malekith prompted, looking at Venil. ‘Continue.’

‘Begging your majesty’s pleasure, it was wrong to resurrect old arguments and vexatious issues,’ said the former assassin, wielding his words as carefully as he once wielded poisoned daggers.

‘Ezresor?’ Malekith’s dark gaze fell upon the spymaster. ‘You wish to add comment?’

‘Your mother believed you were dead, your majesty. She underestimated you, as have many, but she intended no direct assault upon your power.’

‘Without her support, I would have lost Naggarond in the absence of our king,’ Kouran growled at the others. ‘She erred, and when the error was made clear she did all in her power to protect the rule of Malekith.’

‘Usurpers had imprisoned her,’ said Ezresor, a sneer twisting his lips. ‘She would have sought alliance with a bastard shade born of a harpy if it would have helped her cause. She desires the throne of Ulthuan and has used any means to lay her hands upon it, making them puppets when they believed they were following their own will.’

‘Including your king?’ Malekith finished the sentiment. Ezresor’s pale skin seemed to whiten even further and he took a step back, putting distance between himself and his master, throwing a worried look at Kouran for good measure. Malekith laughed but it did not ease Ezresor’s fright. ‘Do you think I am so blind to my mother’s machinations, Ezresor? You may be the lord of my agents, the master of ten thousand cultists and spies, but do not think I know only that which you tell me. I know very well the manner of creature that spawned me, and the deeds of which she is capable.’

A high priestess, lithe and athletic, presided over the despicable ceremony from a dais littered with corpses and blood. Her white robes were spattered with gore, and a daemonic bronze mask covered her face. Her eyes glowed with a pale yellow light from within, and her pupils were tiny points of blackness in pools of luminescence.

In one hand, she held a crooked staff, wrought from bones and iron, and tipped with a horned skull with three eye sockets. In the other, she wielded a curved dagger still slick with the blood of many sacrifices.

Malekith charged across the chamber, cutting down any cultist who barred his path. He was but a few steps from the dais when the priestess thrust forward the tip of her staff and a bolt of pure blackness leapt out and struck the prince full in the chest. The prince’s heart felt like it would explode. With a cry of pain torn from his lips, Malekith faltered and fell to his knees. He was as much shocked as hurt, for he knew of no wizard who could best the sorcerous abilities granted to him by the Circlet of Iron.

He gazed in amazement at the priestess. She stepped down from the dais with languid strides and walked slowly towards the injured prince, the tip of her staff fixed upon him.

‘My foolish child,’ she sneered.

The priestess let the sacrificial dagger slip from her fingers to clatter in a shower of crimson droplets upon the floor. With her hand thus freed, she pulled off her mask and tossed it aside. Though caked with blood, the priestess’ lustrous black hair spilled across her bare shoulders. Her face was pristine, the very image of beauty. In her were aristocratic bearing and divine magnificence combined.

The assembled captains and knights gazed dumbly at this apparition of perfection, ensorcelled.

‘Mother?’ whispered Malekith, his sword slipping from his numb fingers.

‘My son,’ she replied with a wicked smile, eliciting from those that looked on lust and fear in equal measure. ‘It is very rude of you to butcher my servants so callously. Your time amongst the barbarians has robbed you of all manners.’

Malekith said nothing but simply stared up at Morathi, wife of Aenarion, his mother.

‘Her loyalty extends as far as necessity and no further,’ Malekith explained. ‘Her attempts to usurp my power, subtly or directly, are not new to me. Of far graver concern is her ambivalence. If she is willing to let Naggaroth drown beneath the blades of the northlanders it is because she deems our lands, our people, no longer of value. Her greatest plans require powerful patrons and large sacrifices. It is very plausible that she has relented of her disdain for the Chaos Gods and now seeks to buy their favour in its entirety, offering up thousands of Naggarothi in return for their boons.’

‘A treachery far worse than any she has committed before,’ said Venil. ‘It is not my place to instruct you, majesty, but I think it is finally time that we were rid of her meddlesome double-dealing.’

‘You are correct,’ said Malekith. Venil’s smug smile faded as the Witch King continued. ‘It is not your place to instruct me. I will deal with my mother as I see fit.’

‘But you will deal with her?’ said Venil, unable to keep silent but cringing even as he uttered the words as though his mouth had betrayed him. He offered obeisance with bowed head and spread hands. ‘We have lost too much to allow old wounds to continue to fester.’

‘I will think on the matter,’ said Malekith, turning his stare back to the window.

He spent a few moments in contemplation, imagining Venil’s near-dead carcass dancing on one of the barbed chains on the tower opposite. It brought him only a few moments of pleasure before his desire for cruel punishment was superseded by a colder, more pragmatic need.

‘The world is in upheaval,’ he said. ‘Forces of life and death stir and the gaze of the gods falls upon us all. The winds of magic have not been so turbulent since the last great war against the Dark Gods’ servants. The tempest of Chaos obscures unnatural sight, so you must bring me all news from across the globe. I will know what rumour passes in Lothern and Tor Achare. You will tell me what counsel is spoken to the ears of the human kings and Emperor. Armies march, alive and dead, and I would know their disposition and strength. All of this you will bring to me, or you are of no more use.’

‘From your will, majesty, to my hands,’ Venil said, wetting his lips once more. ‘I shall be your eyes and ears, as always.’

Click here to buy The End Times: The Curse of Khaine.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2015.
This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham NG7 2WS UK.

Cover illustration by Fred Rambaud.
Map by Nuala Kinrade.

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* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.