The Great Betrayal

CHAPTER FOUR

What Lies Above…

‘It’s as mysterious to me as it is to you, cousin.’ Morgrim looked behind them, but saw only darkness. ‘How far have we walked?’ Taking off a leather gauntlet, he ran his hand along the wall of the tunnel and then licked his fingers. ‘Tastes familiar.’

‘Zaki,’ said Snorri, using the Khazalid word for ‘mad wandering dwarf’. During the long walk in the dark, his mood had improved and the dour silence between them ebbed until all was well again. Destiny, his to be specific, was still on the dwarf prince’s mind, however. ‘You are probably right, cousin. The old fool was likely senile.’ He tilted his head, thinking. ‘Then again, the words of a runelord are not easily ignored. Are we still lost?’

Pain flared in Snorri’s jaw. He grimaced, staggered by a sudden blow. Glaring at his cousin, he asked, ‘What was that for?’

Morgrim was big, even for a dwarf. His father was bulky too, from a lifetime spent in the mines. Broad of shoulder, stout of chest and back, he had a chin like an anvil and a head like a mattock. Snorri was leaner, though still muscled, and surrendered half a foot in height to his cousin. Bare-knuckled, strength for strength he would not prevail against him.

‘It was either that or I hit you with the hammer,’ said Morgrim.

‘I’m just glad you didn’t butt me with that bloody helmet of yours.’ Snorri rubbed at his chin, wincing at the slowly swelling bruise. ‘Take my bleeding eye out with one of those horns. Big buggers. What was it, a stag?’

‘Beastman. Much larger than a stag, cousin.’ Morgrim smacked his fist into his palm. ‘Are you done talking about destiny, or do you need some more sense knocking into you?’

Snorri held up his half-hand; the bandage was dark crimson but the wound had clotted. He slowly nodded.

‘Me one-handed, weakened from blood loss and being almost buried alive… Reckon you’d have a decent chance of beating me.’

‘Aye,’ said Morgrim, unconvinced it would be any sort of contest, and slapped his hand against the wall. ‘See this?’

Snorri did.

‘I know what stone is, cousin.’

Morgrim glowered at him. ‘Use your eyes, wattock. I know this place. We are no longer lost.’

Snorri frowned, and regarded their surroundings.

‘How can that be? We’ve not long been…’ His voice tailed off, claimed by the darkness which was lessening by the second. Ahead, the crackle of brazier fire resolved on a breeze redolent of shallow earth and the upper world.

A dwarf’s nose can discern much in the subterranean depths. He can tell the difference between the deep earth where he makes his hold, that which harbours veins of gold or precious minerals, and shallow earth, the loamy soil best for crops and farming. Unless he is one of the skarrenawi, those who ‘live under sky’, a dwarf has no interest in such things, but he knows earth and can tell it apart.

Other smells, carried by the breeze, drifted into being. There was grass, leaf, stone dried by the sun, the scent of animals and warm water.

Morgrim nodded as he saw the recognition in his cousin’s expression. ‘It’s the Rorganzbar.’

‘Cannot be,’ said Snorri. No matter how hard he stared at the way they had come, he couldn’t find the doorway through which they had entered the tunnel. ‘We were far from the northern gate.’

‘During the fight, we could have got turned around?’

Snorri raised an eyebrow, dubiously. ‘And ended up over fifty miles in the wrong direction? Are you sure that helmet of yours didn’t take a heavier hit when the cave collapsed? Perhaps you hurt your fist on my jaw and the pain of it has addled your mind?’

‘How else would you explain it?’

Taking a last glance at the darkness behind them and the firelit shadows now glowing ahead, Snorri said, ‘I cannot.’

The Rorganzbar was the name of the northern gates that fed into the upper world from the Ungdrin Ankor. Such passageways were falling out of use, for dwarfs had little need for what lived above ground, but they were fashioned anyway during times when trading with other races was more common. Elves thronged the Old World now, returned after a war, some matter of kinstrife the dwarfs did not really understand. So too did the skarrenawi, the dwarfs of the hills who had chosen to eschew solid earth and stone for the promise of sky and the warmth of the sun. Elgongi some mountain dwarfs called them, ‘elf-friends’.

It was meant as an insult.

As they reached a vast stone gateway, the truth of where they were could not be denied. Runic script along the tall, square pillars of the northern gate confirmed Morgrim’s suspicions.

‘Rorganzbar,’ read Snorri, hands against his hips. ‘Well, I’ll be buggered.’

Numenos hailed them with a shout. Gifted with tongues, the black-clad warrior made it sound like the screech of a crow.

Sevekai found the scout at the summit of the ridge, crouched low in his chosen rookery. He was gesturing for them to climb up and meet him.

A quick glance around at the ambush site revealed that all was in readiness. Blades and quarrels had been gathered, corpses left with asur arrows in their bellies instead. Stowing his own weapons, Sevekai ran up the craggy ridge in long, loping strides. The others followed silently in his wake.

As he crested the rise, he went low and hunkered down behind a cluster of fallen rocks. Numenos was waiting for him, the slit of his mouth curved upwards like a dagger.

‘Fresh meat,’ he hissed, and pointed higher up the mountainside, through a gap in a patch of sparse forest, where a second pathway wended above the one where they had laid their ambush.

Two walkers, dwarfs and nobles judging by their attire. They were armed, but looked as if they had already been in a fight, and they were alone.

Killing merchants in cold blood was one thing, murdering the sons of some thane or king was another entirely. It went against orders, and Sevekai was nothing if not a dutiful soldier.

‘Tempting, but too risky. The dwarfs will look more closely at their deaths.’

The black-clad warriors were peeling away from the summit of the ridge, back into the night, when Kaitar crept up behind Sevekai and gripped his shoulder. It was light, like a breath of wind brushing against him at first, but with a fearsome strength.

Sevekai snarled but his wrath died in his throat when he looked into Kaitar’s eyes. They were fathomless black, as deep pits of cruelty as he’d ever seen.

‘Two scalps like that are worth a hundred wagons,’ he purred without insistence, like he was stating an irrefutable fact.

Despite his earlier misgivings, Sevekai could see the sense in his words and the eagerness for spilling more blood in his followers. He wondered briefly if Kaitar was trying to usurp his leadership but could see no concealed blade, no desire for command in his eyes. He only exuded a frightful ennui, something dark and shrivelled that Sevekai couldn’t reach.

He turned to Numenos. ‘How many more asur shafts remain?’

‘Enough to stick two stunted pigs.’

Sevekai held his gaze then nodded. Licking the dryness from his lips, moistening his throat so his voice wouldn’t catch, he said to Kaitar, ‘We kill the nobles.’

Fashioned of heavy stone, the door to the Rorganzbar needed at least two dwarfs to push it. From the outside it was hard to find, even for those looking for it. Crafted in such a way that it blended in with its surroundings, only a dwarf who knew the exact place and correct height at which to stand could ever hope to find the way into the underdeep through the Rorganzbar.

Snow, light for the time of year, dappled the crags and grassy heaths as the dwarfs stepped outside. The door closed behind them, shut by its own weight in a clever piece of dwarf engineering.

Before them, a long and narrow path that wound around the foothills of the mountains. Above, the towering peaks of the Worlds Edge so high they were lost in thick cloud. Amongst them was Karaz-a-Karak, hold hall of the High King and their home.

It would be a long walk back.

‘See that crag over there?’ Morgrim pointed. ‘The one shaped like a tooth?’

Snorri nodded, mastering a sense of agoraphobia washing over him. A lifetime spent living under the earth where there was no sky apart from the vaulted chambers of the ancestors and the great hold halls had bred a fear of the upper world and all its vastness.

‘I see it, cousin,’ he gasped, not used to the crispness of the air.

‘That’s Karak Varn, and in that deep depression where the mountains and hills thin…’ He gestured again. Snorri nodded. ‘Black Water,’ said Morgrim. ‘We head south from here, and try to pick up the Silk Road then the Dwarf Road down from Black Fire Pass. Follow it all the way back to hearth and hold.’

‘Where I hope there’s meat and beer waiting for us and a fire to warm my feet.’ Snorri laughed, as the two began to walk. ‘You have been ranging with Furgil, I see.’

Thane of pathfinders, Furgil knew the roads and byways of the overground world well, better than any in Karaz-a-Karak. An expert tracker, he was seldom below the earth and spent much of his time under sky instead.

‘You’d do well to heed some of his wisdom, cousin.’

Snorri shrugged. ‘For a skarrenawi, he is not so bad, I suppose. But what need have I for trees and sky?’ He kept his eyes down on the road, on the earth, but his gaze drifted.

Hills undulated below, covered with thick forests of fir and pine, hardy even in winter. Elk and goats watched the passage of the dwarfs nervously from shadowed arbours and brush-choked glades. Deep within the forest, near to the low road, a crow cawed. This close to the mountain there were tors, thickly veiled with rock. Throughout the ages, much of the mountainside had slipped, creating crag-toothed valleys and boulder-strewn fields.

Snorri was glad to feel the solidity of the road underfoot. Strong and flat, it wended around the mountain out of respect. By contrast, the lands beyond it were wild and ragged. This was the domain of the skarrenawi, dwarfs who had left the mountain long ago to find fortune and sovereignty amongst the foothills. Their gilded cities had a dwarf aesthetic. Squat structures of stone and petrified wutroth, resilient to the elements and fortified against attack from beasts and urk or grobi, they had stood for centuries. Outposts dotted the lands of the low hills and plains but the larger cities were few. Kazad Kro was chief amongst them but there was also Kazad Mingol and Kagaz Thar.

Three kings were there of the skarrenawi, but Snorri’s father believed there would be more before the century was out.

In truth, the prince knew little more about them. His father had often remarked on how numerous the skarrenawi had become, of their flourishing trade with elves and men from distant lands he did not remember the names of. They were distinctly un-dwarfish names and so Snorri had no interest in them.

‘Have you ever visited the hill forts?’ asked Morgrim, following Snorri’s gaze.

‘Once. My father brought me to a council with Skarnag Grum, though I think he just wanted to remind the fat noble of who was High King. Two hundred hearthguard and retainers travelled with us and father was carried upon his throne.’

‘Are they like us?’ Morgrim asked. Though he knew Furgil, he had never been to the hill forts.

‘They are dawi… of a fashion. Their skin is lighter and softer. Fairer haired, too, and with shorter beards, but they are decent forgesmiths and can drink almost as well as a proper hall-dweller. Though I cannot fathom why any son of Grungni would prefer sky over earth. It is unnatural.’

‘Perhaps they will soon outnumber the dawi of the mountains and establish more forts.’

‘Ha!’ Snorri shook his head ruefully. ‘Between the elgi and the skarrenawi, the lands beyond the Worlds Edge will be thronged. It already feels crowded as it is.’

Morgrim nodded, ‘I know many amongst the clans, my father included, who think the elgi have encroached too far into the empire. Some believe we would be better-’

‘Hsst!’ Snorri held up a clenched fist. He stooped, looking up into the sky where the clouds conspired to obscure his view. Thunderheads were boiling and a low rumble echoed dully above them.

‘’Tis a storm, nothing more.’

‘Nah, there is something else…’ His eyes narrowed and he turned his ear to listen. ‘Can’t you hear it, a smack of something hitting air?’ He released his axe, and met Morgrim’s questioning gaze. ‘Wings, cousin.’

Morgrim’s brow furrowed. He heard it too.

‘Something big…’

‘And strong enough to defy the wind.’

Unslinging his hammer, Morgrim searched the sky but the growing storm was thick.

‘Perhaps old Silverthumb was right about that drakk.’

Snorri scowled. ‘Unless dwarfs have learned to fly, we need to leave the road. Now.’