The Great Betrayal

CHAPTER FIVE

Sky Ship

The great rock Durazon commanded an unparalleled view over the lands neighbouring Barak Varr. Below the flanks of the mountain, several miles down, tributaries ran like veins of crystal, bleeding from the nearby Black Gulf in shimmering ribbons of azure. They fed valleys and farmland, filled the wells of the lower deeps and birthed three mighty water lanes — Blood River, Howling River and Skull River.

Heglan Copperfist, so named for his father who had discovered a vast seam of the ore and made his fortune trading it with the other clans, had sailed all three rivers. An engineer, Heglan had constructed the grubark he used to ply these waters himself and travelled as far as Karak Varn and Black Water.

Now his mind was occupied by an entirely different enterprise, one that forced his gaze upwards.

Great birds of prey circled in a platinum sky. Screech hawks and crag eagles, the majestic griffon vultures or talon owls, the red condor or the diminutive flocks of peak falcons, Heglan knew them all by size and appearance. Amongst his studies in engineering and the lessons of his guildmasters was an interest in ornithology. Some in the guild believed it to be an unhealthy one.

For as long as he could remember, ever since he was a beardling and his grandfather Dammin had taken him to look out at the wider world from the Durazon, Heglan had believed a ship could be made to fly. Not by growing wings or some such aberration, but by sailing the clouds.

Here, many hundreds of feet up in the high peaks, he would do just that.

Few dwarfs ventured onto the Durazon. Though it was over a hundred paces across, it ended in a crag which led to a sheer, vertiginous drop that for a people who lived most or all of their lives underground was uncomfortable. Not so for Heglan; he relished the sense of freedom he felt standing on this rock that jutted from the flanks of the Sea Hold.

‘Sun stone’ was its literal name and an apt one at that. The rock was wide and flat, perfect for what Heglan needed, and turned gold in summer when the sun was high and pierced the cloud veil. Winter was ending and the rising sun was obscured by storms rolling in from the south-west. Better days for flying would certainly come but with the guild’s patience almost exhausted, Heglan had no choice but to demonstrate his invention now. Frowning at the spreading path of darkness creeping towards them, he just hoped the weather would hold.

From the lofty heavens and the avian beasts he so envied, Heglan’s eyes were drawn downwards.

Arcing from peak to peak, resolute against the rigours of weather and war, were the skyroads. It was whilst crossing the passage from Barak Varr to Karak Drazh that inspiration first struck like a hammer swung by Grungni himself. Stone-clad bands that crossed the mountains through belts of thickening cloud and raucous gales, the skyroads had stood for thousands of years. Ever since the earliest days of the dwarf empire these lofty conduits had enabled those brave enough or surefooted enough to traverse between the holds.

Few did, because most believed a dwarf’s place was below the earth. Unlike the underway, however, the skyroads were not the lair of monsters. Great eagles and other flying beasts were a menace but stocky watchtowers punctuating the long spans provided warning and protection. Trolls and greenskins couldn’t touch these vaulted pathways.

Some engineers had even built ships to travel across them, great propeller-driven longboats that carried cargo and dwarfs by the score. Wind shear made widespread use of these ‘sky ships’ untenable as many had been torn off the skyroads in a strong gale and dashed on the ground far below. But despite its dangers, upon such a bridge a dwarf could literally walk the skies.

For Heglan it was as close as he could come to doing just that.

Until today.

‘Quite a sight, aren’t they?’ said Nadri, breathing deep as he regarded the monolithic skyroads.

‘Aye, they most certainly are, brother.’

‘I have heard standing upon them a dwarf can see the entire kingdom, from Karak Azgal in the south to Karak Ungor in the north.’

Like his brother, Heglan inhaled a full breath of the high mountain air and closed his eyes, remembering.

‘Indeed he can, but such a magnificent vista will pale compared to what I have in mind.’

Nadri clapped Heglan on the shoulder.

‘Ever with your head in the clouds, eh, Heg?’

Unlike his brother, who wore a leather apron with a belt of tools fastened around his ample waist, Nadri was more finely attired as befitted a merchant guildmaster. His tunic was gilded and he wore a small travelling cloak fashioned from the very best hruk wool of the mountains. His leather boots were supple and tan. The many rings upon his fingers shone in the occluded winter sun.

Nadri stroked his ruddy beard. It was well preened and beautifully studded with silver ingots that bound up locks of his hair.

‘Father would have been so very proud,’ he said, and gripped Heglan’s shoulder a little tighter.

Lodri Copperfist was dead, slain by urk over a decade ago during one of the High King’s purges of the mountains. Grief had brought his only sons closer, despite the very different paths they had taken.

‘He loved the skyroads, Nadri. Just like grandfather.’ Heglan’s beard was unkempt, more brown than red and tied together at the end with a leather thong. Most casual observers would not think them kin, but the bond between the siblings was stronger than gromril.

For a moment, Heglan was overtaken by a wistful mood. In his mind’s eye, he soared through the heavens with the wind on his face, buffeting his beard as he flew. Birds arced and pinwheeled beside him, the sense of freedom overwhelming…

Burgrik Strombak brought him back to the ground with a stamp of his foot.

‘Earth is where dwarfs are meant to be,’ he said, a pipe stewing between clenched teeth. ‘Under it or over it, but never flying above it.’

The engineer guildmaster cut a formidable figure. Two mattock-like fists pressed against his broad waist and a thick leather belt filled with tools crossed his slab chest. Strombak knew engines like no other dwarf of Barak Varr. Most of the sea wall defences on the side of the hold that faced the Black Gulf were his design. A circular glass lens sat snug in his left eye, which he used to scrutinise the young engineer before him.

‘What about the sea, master?’ asked Heglan, bowing deferentially. ‘Dawi can sail the seas too, can they not?’

‘You ask me that question in a Sea Hold. Have you hit your head, Heglan Copperfist?’

Heglan bowed again, deeper this time. ‘I only meant that the horizons of our race have broadened before and will again.’

Scowling, Strombak leaned in close. ‘You are fortunate King Brynnoth can see a military use for this machinery of yours.’

Heglan shook his head. ‘No, master. Its intended use is for trade, prosperity and peace, not as an engine of war.’

‘We’ll see.’

Strombak sniffed contemptuously and stomped over to where Heglan’s creation was docked. It had taken sixteen mules and twice as many journeymen to get it up the Merman Pass and onto the Durazon.

It was a ship, a vessel of dark lacquered wood and gilded trim. Incongruous as it was, sitting on the mountain plateau atop a curved ramp, the small wheels attached to its hull arrested by stout wooden braces, it was still magnificent. If he thought so, Strombak did not give any indication.

‘And sea is not air, though, is it,’ grumbled the old engineer, chewing on his pipe and feeling the smoothness of the wooden hull beneath his grizzled fingers. ‘Wood is stout,’ he said, ‘that is something at least.’

As well as the braces against its wheels, the ship was also lashed to iron rings driven deep into the rock so it wouldn’t sway in the wind. A small vessel, it could take five passengers including its captain, but had a hold that would accommodate twice that again in wares for trade. Presently, twenty casks of grog sat in the ship’s belly from the brewmaster’s guild, bound for Zhufbar.

Spry for an old dwarf, Strombak clambered up the ramp and tugged on the rigging.

‘Strong rope,’ he mumbled. ‘Might hold in a decent gale.’

Strombak pulled out the pipe and chewed his beard. It was black with soot from his workshops and resembled a fork in the way the strands of it were parted by bronze cogs and screws. A leather skullcap covered his bald pate, which he revealed when he removed the cap to wipe his sweating brow. Runes of engineering, telemetries and trajectories, parabolic equations and yet more esoteric markings lined his skull in knot-worked strands.

He paced the length of the ship, appraising its rudder and sneering at the absence of sweeps. Sails jutted horizontally from the sides and with the effigy of a dragon carved into the prow it had the appearance of some alate predator, albeit one fashioned from wood and metal.

Sat astern was a small tower, where its captain was already installed and at the wheel. Three large windmills surmounted masts that stuck out from the deck, angled slightly so as not to be perpendicular to the ground.

‘Never have I seen a more awkward-looking ship,’ Strombak muttered. He turned away, as if he’d seen enough, and addressed Heglan. ‘You’d best get on with it. Guilders are waiting.’

Behind the engineer guildmaster were three other dwarfs of the engineers’ guild, the high thane of Barak Varr himself and his retainers, and a contingent from the merchants’ guild who had funded the enterprise. Every one of the assembled nobles and guilders, some thirty-odd dwarfs, was silent.

Nadri stepped back and joined his fellow guilders.

Heglan licked his lips to moisten them. He glanced at the ship’s captain to ascertain his readiness. A vague nod didn’t do much for Heglan’s confidence at that moment.

‘Tromm,’ he uttered, crafting a deep bow to the lords as he gave the traditional dwarf greeting for veneration of one’s betters and elders. ‘High Thane,’ he added, rising but turning to the entire assembly. ‘With your permission, Lord Onkmarr.’

The high thane nodded dourly.

King Brynnoth was away in Karaz-a-Karak attending a council of the High King and had left Onkmarr in charge as regent until his return. Unlike Brynnoth, who had a ribald manner and was as gregarious as any king of the dwarf realm, Onkmarr always seemed slightly put upon. Perhaps it was the fearsome rinn he had taken as his wife. Certainly, his posture was more stooped, his humour more acerbic, ever since he had made a union with her.

Premature age lines furrowing on his brow like cracks in weathered rock, Onkmarr looked as if he wanted nothing more than to return to his hall and his business. Especially if that business was sitting by his fire, seeing to the affairs of the hold and staying out of his wife’s way. With the exception of Nadri, the entire assembly appeared eager to get Heglan’s demonstration over with.

‘Go on, Copperfist,’ grumbled Strombak, ‘make your oaths and hope they’re good ones.’

Heglan nodded, clearing his throat to speak.

‘Thanes and masters of Barak Varr, vaunted guilders, we stand on the precipice of a momentous discovery. Ever have the dawi been lords of the earth-’ nods and muted grunts of approval greeted this proclamation, ‘-and the clans of Barak Varr are lords of the sea too.’ This brought further bouts of agreements and much chest puffing, especially amongst the engineers. ‘But now, with this innovation,’ a word that elicited grumbles of disapproval and reproachful glances, ‘we can be lords of the sky too.’

Heglan stepped back so the attention of the dwarf nobles was on the ship. He whispered behind his hand to the captain.

‘Turn the propellers…’

Having missed his cue, the dwarf in the tower pulled at some levers and the three windmills attached to the masts began to rotate.

‘Skryzan-harbark,’ Heglan declared. ‘The first ever dawi airship!’

Six burly dwarf journeymen in short sleeves and leather aprons were on standby next to ropes that fed to the braces impeding the vessel’s wheels. Another two stood ready with axes to cut the lashed sails.

At a sign from Heglan, the sails were freed and the wooden stops removed.

Creaking wood made him wince as the ramp took the weight of the ship and it rolled onto the curve. Propellers were beating furiously now as the captain tested the rudder experimentally as he pitched towards the edge of the cliff.

It got a decent run up, needing to gather speed before the Durazon ended and all that sat beneath the ship was air.

‘Grungni, I beseech you…’ muttered Heglan, hiding his fervent oath from the other dwarfs as the airship plunged off the end of the ramp at pace. It rolled on for almost fifty feet, wheels spinning, propellers turning like mad. And with sails unfurled, Heglan’s creation launched off the edge of the rock and soared like an arrow.

He fought the urge to shout for joy, content to clench a fist in triumph at the skryzan-harbark’s inaugural flight instead.

Surprised but approving mutterings issued from the throng of guilders and nobles in a rumbling susurrus of speech as they beheld the flying ship.

‘Valaya’s golden cups, lad,’ breathed Strombak, unable to hide the fact he was impressed. ‘I did not think you would do it. The ship is small, but if you can get this to work we can enlarge it.’

Bowing his head, Heglan’s voice was low and deferential at such high praise. ‘Tromm, my master. This is just a trial vessel. I have plans for bigger versions.’

Clapping the young engineer on the shoulder, Strombak stepped back to discuss the incredible ship with his fellow guilders.

Disengaging himself from the other merchants, Nadri joined his brother and slapped him heartily on the back. ‘It is a marvel, Heg, a true wonder to help usher in a prosperous new age.’

Heglan barely heard — he was watching the realisation of a dream.

‘See how the sails billow and catch the wind?’ he said. ‘And the way it achieves loft and forward motion.’

‘It is…’ Nadri’s smile turned into a frown, ‘…listing, brother.’

At the same time a look of horror was slowly creeping its way onto Heglan’s face.

A heavy gust of wind, driven hard and fast through the peaks, pitched the airship to one side. The sails bulged like an overfull bladder, straining against the rigging, and the dragon prow listed awkwardly as if the ship was drunk on too much grog.

‘Compensate, compensate…’ Heglan urged the captain, who was lost from view but evidently struggling at the controls.

Ugly and portentous, the sound of snapping rigging resolved on the breeze and a deep crack fed down one of the masts. The ship began to turn on its axis, pulled and buffeted by the wind.

‘Grimnir’s hairy arse, no…’ Heglan could see the danger before it unfolded fully but was powerless to avert it. He would have run to the edge of the Durazon in the vain hope that his proximity to the ship would somehow guarantee its continued flight if Nadri hadn’t held him back.

Buoyed on the harsh thermals whipping up from below, slewed by the biting wind, the ship lurched. The dragon bit upwards, briefly righting itself before yawing dangerously the other way. Pulled back and forth at the whim of the elements, there was nothing the captain or Heglan could do. With a loud crack, made louder and more resonant as it echoed around the peaks, one of the masts snapped. It split in half and speared the deck, releasing a fountain of dark beer from the grog in the hold. Like a lance in the belly of a beast, the skryzan-harbark was wounded. At the same time, one of its sails sheared in half, plucked from its bearings and scattered like sackcloth on the wind.

‘Girth of Grungni, no.’

But all the sworn oaths of the dwarf ancestors couldn’t stop the encroaching storm from ripping Heglan’s dreams apart. Utterly helpless in his brother’s arms, all he could do was watch. Like a pugilist that had taken too many licks, the vessel was thrown about and battered by the storm. Slowly the airship began to lose height and sank deeper and deeper into the valleys below. Cloud partly obscured it but soon parted to reveal crags, encroaching from the lower peaks and jutting spurs of rock. Bitterly, Heglan wished he had the foresight to launch the skryzan-harbark over the sea-facing aspect of the hold. Pitching into the waters of the Black Gulf, the vessel could be rescued. Hitting one of the lower peaks or the hard earth of the plains, it would be smashed to splinters.

Below the jagged fingers of rock, the thick spires of stone that could impale the airship and rip it right in half as it fell, were boulder-strewn heaths. Scattered farms dotted the landscape but it was largely barren aside from old burial mounds and trickle-thin streams. Plummeting now, loft decreasing more swiftly with each passing moment, but no longer spinning, the airship slipped through the forest of crags and spires.

Only earth awaited it, packed tight and resilient by the winter. It would be like hitting the solid rock of the mountainside.

Heglan cursed again. Foolish sentiment had got in the way of prudence. Heart ruling the head, it was a mistake he had made before. Nostalgia to release the airship from the Durazon and honour his grandfather Dammin’s memory had left him undone.

He wept openly at the thought, but could not take his eyes off the vessel he had so doomed. Striking the edge of the last crag, just the smallest of nicks, the hull was torn open in an explosion of splintering wood.

Every blow brought a wince to Heglan’s tear-streaked face.

‘Valaya, please be merciful…’

But the ancestor goddess of healing was not listening. Her gaze, deep within the earth, did not extend to sky and cloud. Thunder and storm were Grimnir’s domain, and he was ever wrathful.

Entangled with the rigging, the other sails ripped open and dragged much of the hull with them. Deciding upon discretion rather than valour, the dwarf captain at the wheel leapt from the tower and hit the ground a few seconds before the stricken vessel. He landed with a heavy bump, but otherwise survived unscathed.

The same could not be said for the skryzan-harbark.

Prow first, the airship ploughed an ugly furrow into a rugged patch of farmland. Its proud dragon head smashed upon impact, split down its skull as if killed by some mythical dragon slayer. The hull broke apart like a barrel divested of its bands, and the ship’s three masts jutted at obscure angles like broken fingers.

Bruised, in both pride and rump, the dwarf captain looked down at the wreckage that had finally settled in the valley and then up at the Durazon. Too far to see anything, he limped off furtively.

Heglan’s wrath almost overflowed. He hoped the dwarf below would feel its heat as he looked on disconsolately.

Impelled by what was left of their perpetual motion, two of the propellers still spun. The rudder flapped like a dead fish, hanging on by one of its hinges, the stern jutting up in the air in an undignified fashion.

Free of Nadri’s grip, Heglan sank to his knees and held his face in his hands.

‘I am finished,’ he breathed, letting his fingers trawl down his cheeks, pulling at his beard in anguish.

‘Dreng tromm,’ muttered Nadri, shaking his head. ‘I am sorry, brother. I really thought it would work.’

‘It should have worked, but I didn’t take into account the wind shear, the vagaries of weather or that wazzock, Dungni.’

Adding insult to already stinging injury, the grog from the sundered hold began to leak through the jagged gashes in the wood. It reminded Heglan of blood. His magnificent machine was dead, his dream was dead, so too his tenure as an engineer of Barak Varr.

Strombak was not kind with his reproach as he stomped over to him.

‘Gather it up, all of it,’ he growled under his breath. ‘You have disgraced this guild with your invention and your enterprise. Such things are not for dawi! Tradition, solidity, dependability, that’s what we strive for.’

Heglan begged. ‘Master, I… Perhaps if-’

‘If? If! There is no “if”. Dawi do not fly. We live under earth and stone. Do not tread in the same shameful footsteps as your grandfather. Dammin was thrown out of the guild, or is your memory so short that you’ve forgotten? Keen to endure the Trouser Legs Ritual too are you, Heglan son of Lodri?’

The rest of the assembly was leaving, chuntering about the wilfulness of youth and foolhardy beardlings. First to go was the high thane, already descending the Merman Pass on his palanquin-shield. He left without word or ceremony, pleased to leave the draughty plateau no doubt and enjoy the fire in the hearth of his hold hall.

Unable to rise from his knees, Heglan answered Strombak with his head bowed, ‘No, master. I only wish to be an engineer of the guild. I am a maker, a craftsman. Please don’t take that from me.’

The scowl on Strombak’s face could have been chiselled on, engraved much like the runes on his tools, but it softened briefly before Heglan’s contrition.

‘You’re not without skill, Heglan. A decent engineer, aye. But you’re wayward, lad.’ He gestured to the sky, ‘Head up in the clouds when it should be here-’ he stamped his boot upon the rock, ‘-in the earth. We’re not birds or elgi, we’re dawi. Sons of Grungni, stone and steel. You’d do well to remember that. Not like your grandfather. He was gifted-’ Strombak’s voice became rueful, ‘-but he squandered it on foolishness and invention.’

Heglan remained silent throughout his chastisement. Strombak left a long pause to glare at him, measuring him as he would a windlass, crank or a mechanism, to see if what he was saying was sinking in. He grumbled something inaudible, an expression not a word, then sighed deeply.

‘Another misstep and you’ll be cast out, sworn to secrecy about all you know of our craft.’ Jabbing a leathery finger at Heglan, he said, ‘Change your ways or change your profession! Barrel makers and hruk shearers are always looking for guilders. Now,’ he added, drawing in a long breath that flared his nostrils, ‘gather up that mess and use it to fashion something that works, something tried and tested. Tradition, not progression, lad — that is the dawi way.’

Heglan nodded — there was little else he could do — and was left alone with Nadri.

On the Durazon, the winter sun was dying as the storm from the southern peaks eclipsed it. Black clouds were gathering, billowing like wool across the sky and full with the promise of thunder.

Wearily, the engineer picked himself up. It felt as if he’d been beaten by a mob of urk.

‘Bloody Dungni, son of Thok!’ he spat, his shame giving way to anger. If his glare could kill then the dwarf captain sloping back towards the outer gate of the hold would have died at once. ‘Drunken bloody bozdok. The clod handles a ship like a grobi grabbing at a hruk. Grungni’s arse, I’ll see this lodged with the reckoners.’

Nadri looked on grimly, at Dungni and the wreck scattered like kindling across the lowland.

‘Stoke that furnace, brother. A dawi without fire in his gut is no dawi at all,’ he said, and whistled at the devastation. ‘Not much to salvage?’

‘Ruined, brother,’ said Heglan his voice barely louder than a whisper. ‘There is nothing left. Nothing.’ He seemed to sag, sinking lower than when he was on his knees. ‘Bugger.’

A muted cough broke the brief silence that had fallen between them. Nadri turned at the thinly veiled signal.

‘Krondi?’ he said, addressing one of the merchants who had also remained behind but who was anonymously waiting at the gate to Merman Pass.

‘My thane.’ Krondi bowed deeply. He was a grizzled dwarf, who had seen much battle in the wars of the High King against the urk. Fair-bearded, he never really fit into the mould of a merchant but had been part of the guild for almost a decade. ‘We are expected in Zhufbar in just over two weeks.’

‘Aye,’ said Nadri, ‘and a stop to make at Karaz-a-Karak beforehand. I am well aware of our commitments, Krondi.’

Krondi bowed. ‘Of course, my thane.’

Nadri narrowed his eyes at the other merchant. ‘Is our passenger ready to travel?’

‘He is. Our wagons stand ready to depart at your word.’

Nadri looked down at the wreck in the valley again. ‘Then it would not do to keep him waiting,’ he said to himself beneath his breath before regarding Krondi again. ‘Ride on ahead and pass on my assurances to the king’s reckoners that he’ll get what he’s owed. Gildtongue has never reneged on a bond of trade, tell them.’

Though Nadri’s family name was Copperfist, he was known as ‘Gildtongue’ by his fellows in the merchant guild on account that his every word turned to gold. So successful was he as a trader that he had holdings and wealth that some kings would envy. Of course, in Karaz-a-Karak the hoard of any merchant would always be bettered by the High King.

‘I need you to leave me two carts with mules and drivers, Krondi.’

Krondi bowed again and left down the Merman Pass without further word.

‘You risk much by not making full delivery, brother,’ said Heglan. ‘Don’t let my failure drag you down.’

‘Don’t be a wazzock, Heg. By Valaya’s golden cups, I’m helping you pick up the pieces of your ship. There is no argument to be had.’

Heglan looked about to protest, but there would be no changing Nadri’s mind and so he capitulated. He cast a final glance at the wreckage, the vessel into which he had poured his craft, his sweat and his heart.

‘I could have made it fly,’ he uttered, the strength of his voice stolen by the wind.

Nadri tried to be consoling. ‘You did, brother.’

‘That wasn’t flight, it was a slow fall.’

‘Don’t be too disheartened, Heg. At least you are still of the guild.’ Nadri was heading towards Merman Gate. From there, they’d travel the winding pass all the way to the upper hold gate, just above the first deep.

Heglan waited until Nadri had passed under the Merman Gate and was out of earshot.

‘I will make it fly, brother,’ he said beneath his breath. ‘For Dammin and Lodri Copperfist, I shall do it.’

Heglan and Nadri were already back inside the hold, through the fastness wall and more than halfway down Merman Pass when a bell tolled. It was a warning signal from the sea wall at the other side of Barak Varr.

Through the glass lens the waters of the Black Gulf undulated like a desert of obsidian. Tiny breakers, errant spumes of white foam, exposed the lie of that misperception. In the storm darkness it appeared endless, stretching to an infinite horizon. In truth, it was vast and the Sea Hold of Barak Varr was its only bastion-port.

A flotilla of ghazan-harbarks, six in all, plied the gulf. A signal had roused them and together they looked for enemies.

Nugdrinn Hammerfoot perched on the prow of one of the ships, and scoured a small stretch of the Black Gulf that was lapping at the flanks of the Sea Hold. He had a brass telescope pressed to his left eye and peered hard through the lens. Three beacons were lit in the watchtowers, which meant three dwarfs had seen something approaching the gate. A warning bell was tolling, warring with the persistent ringing in the captain’s ears, but thus far the horns had stayed silent.

Cessation of the bell and the clarion of horns meant danger approached and the many defences of the sea wall would be levelled at the intruders. Batteries of ballistae and mangonels stood sentry upon the wall, as well as a hefty garrison of Barak Varr quarrellers. If the ghazan-harbarks were the hunters then the warriors on the sea wall would be the spear to slay whatever predator was lurking in the darkness beyond their lanterns.

‘Bori, bring the lamp forwards,’ he said, one meaty fist wrapped around a length of rope to steady him, one clutching the telescope to his remaining eye. The other was patched, a small oval of leather studded with the ancestor badge of Grungni.

O’er earth and sea, the great miner sees all, Nugdrinn would often say and tap his eye-patch. In other words, just because he only had one eye didn’t mean he wasn’t watching. ‘Shine it here, lad.’ He pointed with the telescope. ‘Here. Quickly now.’

Nugdrinn had been a sailor all of his life. Born and raised in Barak Varr, there was no ship he could not sail, no ocean he dared not face. Unlike many dwarfs, even those of the Sea Hold, he was at peace with a stout hull and the waves beneath him, so whilst on the gulf his instincts could not be more honed. They were telling him something was out there, lurking in the dark.

Nugdrinn wanted to know what it was.

Lantern light washed over the water, casting it in ruddy orange. It was as if a fire was burning beneath the waves, just about to emerge and swathe the Black Gulf in conflagration.

Beasts lurked in the deeps, way down in the cold ocean darkness. Tales abounded of tentacled kraken and vicious megaladon, the dread black leviathan and the unearthly Triton. Such stories were spun by drunken sailors looking to enhance their reputation or angling for a pint of grog at the listener’s expense, but Nugdrinn knew first hand there was some truth to them.

Out in the deep ocean he had seen… shadows lurking just beneath the waves, too vast and grotesque to be some mundane predator. Issuing from miles below, he had heard the call of beasts, abyssal deep and full of malice.

One moonless night, many years ago in the waters of the far north, he had witnessed the hide of some gargantuan beast slowly disappearing beneath the waves. Returning from Kraka Drak and the snow-clad fastness of the Norse dwarfs, the holds of their three grubarks brimming with the gold of the northern huscarl-king, Nugdrinn had glimpsed the monster from a distance. By the time he had the telescope to his eye, the beast had sunk beneath the water but several sundered ships were left in its wake.

It was a chill night. Frost clung to the deck, resolved as a ghostly pale mist in the captain’s breath. Ice cracked as the dwarfs’ ships ploughed through it. Nugdrinn’s teeth chattered and not just from the abominable cold. It took several minutes to find the courage to sail close enough to the scene of devastation to look for survivors. It took less time for them to discover there were no crewmen amongst the broken hulks. Only blood remained, and carnage.

Stooping to hook a broken piece of debris that carried the clan’s sigil so he might bring word of their demise to their kin, Nugdrinn saw a great blackness through the gaps in the floating remains of the ship. Too late, he recoiled but by then the beast had scented his fear. It came crashing out of the waves stinking of old blood and the cold dank of death. With its single gelatinous eye, the beast fixed on Nugdrinn. Its first bite took apart the grubark, tore a great cleft from the hull and doomed it. Under such incredible pressure, the deck violently split apart and sent a dagger-sized splinter into the dwarf’s eye. Nugdrinn screamed but had enough about him still to try and scramble back up what was left of his ship before a second bite claimed his foot.

Half blind, Nugdrinn roared. He bit his lip, used the pain to stop himself from passing out. Blood gushing from the ruined stump of his left leg was already freezing, sealing up the wound. A deeper cold was spreading through Nugdrinn’s body when the other dwarfs attacked. Crossbow bolts, some with their tips drenched in oil and then lit, hailed the beast. Thick-bladed throwing axes gouged its flanks. Piercing its blubbery hide, the barbed quarrels drew a bleat of pain from the beast’s puckered maw, which was champing up and down on the rapidly disintegrating hull. A noisome stench rolled from its gullet, redolent of putrefaction and the slow rot of the half-frozen dead.

A second barrage of axes and quarrels forced the beast under but it had claimed Nugdrinn’s foot and his eye.

Anger and a desire for retribution kept him alive until the dwarfs reached Barak Varr some months later. A mattock head was forged by Guildmaster Strombak to replace the piece of his limb he had lost and so Nugdrinn became ‘Hammerfoot’ to ever remind him of what he owed the beast.

The memory of that night still brought a tremor to his hand that made the view through his telescope quiver, if only slightly. Nudgrinn took a stronger grip of the rope, glad his rune axe was looped to the belt around his waist.

‘Is it you, daemon?’ he asked the water. ‘Has the gulf spewed up a monster from the watery hells of Triton’s cage?’

The water didn’t answer.

Instead, the amber glow of the lantern crept across the waves until it found something to alight on.

Nugdrinn snapped shut the telescope and pulled out his axe. He’d fight the beast one-handed, lashed to the prow.

‘Come forth then,’ he bellowed, vying against the roar of the water that was in a foaming frenzy with the wind peeling off the northern peaks. ‘And I’ll take from you what you took from me in recompense.’

His ghazan-harbark pitched and yawed but Nugdrinn barely noticed. Adrift on rough water was akin to walking to the experienced captain. His face was slick with spray, little diamonds of seawater clinging to his beard. A rime of salt layered his upper lip and he licked it.

‘I taste blood on the water, fiend,’ he promised. ‘I’ll open up yer belly and release those poor lost souls you devoured. I’ll cut yer until your entrails spill into the black and are swallowed whole by the briny deep. Come forth!’

For such a monster to be found so close to Barak Varr was unheard of, but Nugdrinn wasn’t about to shame the ancestors by doubting it.

A shadow, half-revealed in the lamplight, became more distinct as its identity was unmasked at last.

Nugdrinn lowered his axe, and let his ire cool.

‘Douse the lamp,’ he said. His heart thundered, and his breath quickened in his chest.

It was wood floating on the gulf. Just a piece of hull, a chunk of stern or prow, some vessel broken out in the deep ocean and washed up on the shores of Barak Varr.

It was nothing. Yet, as the urgency and fervour fled his veins and left him cold and trembling, Nugdrinn could not shake the feeling that there had been something out in the gulf.

But the bell tolled on and no horn was heard on the rough black waters.

‘Douse the lamps,’ Nugdrinn said again, retreating back to the deck and wondering what they had missed.

Blood magic was never predictable. It was a roiling mass of archaic forces drawn together through murder and slaughter, a hound brought to the leash but never fully at heel. Dhar, the Dark Wind, was capricious but the deeds that could be wrought through its manipulation were great and terrible. Drutheira knew her art well, however, and had practised much. She knew, as all sorcerers must, that dark magic always required sacrifice. The dead druchii warrior with her throat cut, spilling arterial crimson all over the deck, was testament to that.

Most of the blood from the corpse had been wasted, but there was enough to fill a ritual bowl in the middle of the deck. From it tendrils of ruddy smoke quested like the tentacles of some abyssal horror. They enveloped the raiding ship, occluded it from sight. Thus clouded could the dark elves pass by the watchtowers of the dwarfs and gain passage through the Black Gulf into the rivers of the Old World proper.

Two other witches, Malchior and Ashniel, completed the coven. Lesser sorcerers both than Drutheira, they channelled their mastery into her and she became a conduit that articulated the power of the whole. Sweat dappled her brow, intense concentration written upon her face as she maintained the casting all the way through the gate markers that led them north. As one the triumvirate muttered their incantations through taut, bloodless lips as the other warriors looked to the sea wall and hoped the enchantment would hold long enough for them to pass by.

At the stern of the raider ship, a dark elf stood ready behind the vessel’s reaper. The single bolt thrower would find itself quickly outmatched by the battalion of ballistae arrayed against it, so too the twenty or so warriors armed with spear and shield at the ship’s flanks. Their fate was in the hands of Drutheira and her witches.

Slowly, agonisingly so, the sea wall faded from sight and the dark elves left the Sea Hold behind them with the dwarfs unaware of them ever having been present in their waters.

Drutheira let out a pained breath, the evidence of her body’s trauma revealed in the dark flecks on the hand that she used to cover her mouth.

The others sagged, visibly drained. Ashniel wiped a trickle of crimson from her mouth, whilst Malchior staunched his bleeding left nostril with a black cloth he then secreted back into his robes.

‘Dhar is a hard mistress,’ he remarked, coughing into his hand. When he wiped it away quickly with his sleeve there was blood on his palm.

‘Does the sight of blood on your own skin upset you, Malchior?’ Ashniel was young and impetuous, but possessed rare magical talent. She also delighted in taunting Malchior.

‘I am perfectly sanguine, my little dear,’ he replied in a sibilant voice, a savage and murderous glint in his eyes. ‘But I would much rather it was your blood.’

Bristling at the obvious threat, she spoke through a dagger-

curved grin. ‘I could flay the flesh from your bones, here in this very ship.’

Malchior did his best to appear unmoved. ‘Ah, the boldness of youth. Such overconfidence for a whelp…’

‘Whore-killing dog!’ she hissed, summoning a nimbus of dark magic and shaping it in her talon-like fingers.

‘Cease your bickering,’ snapped Drutheira, dispelling the casting with a curt slash of her hand, ‘and know that I am a harder mistress than the Wind of Dhar.’ Her wrath faded as quickly as it had appeared, and she narrowed her eyes like a predator to its unwitting prey. ‘Save your strength. Both of you. We are not finished, not yet.’

That revelation brought a sneer to Ashniel’s blade-thin lips. Malchior tried to hide his dismay behind a viper’s charm but failed.

‘Whatever our mistress requires,’ he purred with a small bow.

Ashniel showed her acquiescence by turning the sneer into a mirthless smile. Drutheira had seen harpies with more humour and resolved to kill the little witch once this was done.

She glanced down at the brass bowl around which the coven was sitting. Together they formed a triangle with Drutheira at its apex. Crimson steam rolled off the sloped interior of the bowl and once it cleared only a residue of the vital fluid remained.

‘Vaulkhar,’ she called, as if summoning something as mundane as wine or meat, ‘I need more.’

The vaulkhar nodded and gestured to two of his crew. A third, who paled when the captain’s cold gaze fell upon him, drew his sword but was subdued before he could put up much of a fight. Disarmed, forced to kneel over the bowl, he screamed as Drutheira drew her ritual knife and cut his throat.

Blood, hot and fresh, spilled into the sacrificial vessel.

‘Communion…’ uttered Drutheira, her voice laced with power, and the three began to chant.

Bubbles rose on the surface of the dark pool as if it were boiling, but no heat emanated from within. Instead an image began to resolve as the fluid thickened. Scarred as if by fire and contorted into a rictus of pure agony, a face appeared in the morass. It had been noble once, now it was ravaged and hellish. Opening its mouth in a silent scream, the face arched back and was consumed.

The bubbling subsided, replaced by ripples, slight at first but growing with intensity as the seconds passed. A pair of tiny nubs, like the peaks of two mountains surrounded by a lake, protruded from the pool. Nubs became horns and the horns crested an ornate helm of jagged edges and bladed ornamentation. It was a barbed piece of armour, sharp and cold. Dripping with blood, its entire surface drowned in viscous gore, a head emerged from the deep red mire.

Unlike before, furnace heat radiated off this manifestation that pricked the skin and brought a grimace of pain to Drutheira’s face.

‘Dark lord,’ she uttered, bowing her head in deference.

Though fashioned magically from congealed blood, her master was no less terrifying. He glowered at the coven, his malice as palpable as the gore-slicked deck beneath them.

At first his words were too thick to understand, spoken in an ancient and evil tongue Drutheira could not translate. Slowly, inexorably, it began to make sense.

‘Tell me of your progress,’ commanded the bloody effigy.

‘We cross the borders of the Sea Hold, lord and are even now headed northwards.’

‘And the dwarfs are unaware of your presence?’

‘We passed their defences undetected. The stunted swine could not tell us from the ugly noses on their faces,’ she added, allowing a pang of hubris to colour her reply.

‘Don’t underestimate them,’ the face snarled, and Drutheira recoiled from its hate and power as if struck. ‘Snorri Whitebeard was no fool, and had power. His descendants are worthy of you, sorceress.’

‘No, of course not,’ she whispered, abruptly cowed. ‘All is as you bid it, lord.’

‘An alliance must not be made between elf and dwarf. They must destroy one another utterly.’

‘It will be as you will it.’

‘See that it is.’

Rivulets were streaking down the effigy as the magical communion lost potency. Like wax before a strong flame, the blood was slowly melting back into the pool from whence it emerged.

‘What is your command, lord?’ asked Drutheira, concealing her relief at the spell’s ending.

‘Our allies are already abroad. The shade Sevekai and his band await my orders through you. Together, enact my plans I have given to you. See the asur undone by their own nature.’ As the face sloughed away, its words became slurred and indistinct. The horns had already gone, collapsed into the pool along with much of the jagged helm. Even the eyes had bled away to nothing, the head caving in shortly after until only the mouth remained. ‘Yours is but a piece of a much greater plan. Sevekai is to be your scout, your herald. Use him. Fail me and you need not return to Naggaroth…’

Like the final exhalation of breath from a corpse, the voice gurgled into nothing but the threat remained as real and immediate as a knife perpetually at her throat.

Drutheira swallowed, imagining the caress of that steel, and drew on hidden reserves of strength to speak.

I am drained, she said into the minds of her coven. Her eyes were closed. To the warriors aboard the raider ship it would appear as if she were meditating.

We all are, Ashniel replied, as precocious as ever.

Drutheira kept her annoyance at the interruption from her face.

That is why when we reach the shore we will kill every elf aboard this ship and steal the vigour from their blood.

Storm clouds billowed across the mainland, presaging the chaos to come.

At the prow of the ship, the vaulkhar snarled orders to the crew. Unbeknownst to him and his warriors, the coven shared a conspirators’ smile.

Malekith had spoken and they would enact his will or they would die.