The Great Betrayal

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hearth and Hold

Thurbad left them as soon as they had passed through the great gate and were safely inside the outer entrance hall of the upper deep. A vast echoing chamber had greeted the dwarf nobles, a very dark and sombre place with its gloom leavened partly by immense brazier pans aloft on chains suspended from the vaulted ceiling. The glow of fiery coals cast a lambent light across statues, inscribed columns and yawning archways. It barely reached the ceiling, the creeping tongues of fire lapping less than halfway up the columns, but cast enough of a glow to make the inlaid gemstones sparkle like a firmament of lost stars embedded in a stony sky.

At the back of the chamber, across a sprawling plaza of stone slabs, was the Ekrund. This monstrously broad stairway was the outer marker that led to the lower deeps and the hold proper. Stout-looking Gatekeepers, the same brotherhood who watched the eagle gates, glared like stone golems from their posts, barring the way below to the uninvited.

At its flanks, half hidden in shadowy alcoves, were the hearthguard. Though ostensibly the bodyguard of dwarf nobles, the warrior veterans were arrayed in force to safeguard the many retainers and dignitaries the kings and regents of the other holds had brought with them as part of their entourages.

Treasure keepers, shield carriers and lantern-hands, oath-makers, lorekeepers, reckoners, banner bearers, weaponsmiths and gold counters, muleskinners and their mules, wheelwrights, bards, brewmasters, cooks and consorts all hustled together more than a thousand strong. Like any regal lord a dwarf king had need of many servants, but such retainers were never admitted to the great halls. Despite the masses, the grand entrance hall was not even close to full. Yet dwarfs favoured closeness to their kith and kin, and so the entourage of each king and regent chose to stand together.

They were watched keenly by quarrellers, the king’s own, from a lofty perch of stone overlooking the entire chamber. Both Snorri and Morgrim knew that two hundred and fifty of the Eagle Watch were tasked with the safeguarding of the outer entrance hall. There were no better marksmen in the realm, not even the rangers.

As soon as the nobles had set foot inside the hall a doleful voice had boomed out, resonating through a speaking horn.

‘Prince Snorri Lunngrin, son of Gotrek, of clan Thunderhorn,’ it announced, and then ‘Morgrim Bargrum, son of Bardum, of clan Ironbeard,’ shortly afterwards. This had continued, until each and every one of the new arrivals was accounted for, named and recorded.

All had bowed, even Snorri, to the speaker and showed their respect as one.

‘Tromm,’ they intoned.

Standing behind a pulpit of stone, raised above ground level by a thick dais, was one of Karaz-a-Karak’s lorekeepers. A thick, leather-bound tome sat on the lectern in front of him and he called the names of each and every visitor, be it dwarf, elf or otherwise, that entered or left the entrance hall. This he then recorded in his book for the later use of reckoners or chroniclers. With all the retainers currently in residence, there was little wonder the lorekeeper was hoarse.

‘And so we are named,’ said Morgrim as the hearthguard departed.

‘Are you not seeing me to the temple then, Shieldbearer?’ Snorri asked of Thurbad.

The hearthguard captain did not look back. ‘I’ve charged your cousin with that duty, my prince.’

‘Let it be known that Thurbad Shieldbearer did make grudgement against the heir of Karaz-a-Karak,’ said Snorri in a petulant tone under his breath.

‘You’d be wise not to bait him, cousin.’

‘Aye, I reckon my next lesson in axecraft or hammer throwing will be a hard one.’

‘I have no doubt at all.’

Morgrim gestured to the myriad retainers thronging part of the hall. He noted some bored but stoic faces.

‘The rinkkaz must be well attended and many hours old.’

‘It will last for days, cousin,’ Snorri moaned, striding purposefully towards the Ekrund, ‘days. You had best get me to my priestess. I think I’ll have need of some fortification before seeing my father again,’ he said with a wink.

‘I do not envy him, cousin,’ said Morgrim, ‘not at all.’

At the entrance to the temple of Valaya, the dwarfs parted ways.

Snorri regarded his bandaged hand. The blood had long since clotted, making a mess of the wrappings Morgrim had used to staunch the bleeding.

‘You are not half bad as a nurse, cousin. Shave your beard and perhaps they’d have you at the temple if the miners’ guild doesn’t work out for you.’

‘I see your humour has returned,’ Morgrim answered dryly.

‘Only, if you do, make sure you don’t tend my battlefield injuries. I would rather it be a rinn that bathe my cuts and clean my wounds. One in particular, in fact.’ A flash of mischief lit up Snorri’s eyes at this last remark.

‘Ah, and now I see why.’

‘She has been waiting for me, I am sure.’

Morgrim groaned, removing his horned helmet to massage his forehead in exasperation.

‘Tenacious as ever then?’

‘Would you not be with a rinn like that? She is no Helda.’

‘That we can agree on. You do know that priestesses cannot be betrothed to any dwarf, noble or not?’

‘Who is talking about marriage here, cousin?’

The Valkyrie Maidens, temple warriors of Valaya, glared scornfully at the prince from behind their half-faced war helms but Snorri seemed not to notice.

Morgrim rubbed his eyes, as if a persistent headache he thought gone had suddenly returned to haunt him.

‘I bid you farewell and good luck,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and find what news there is to be had of the hold. Try and keep it in your trousers.’

Snorri grinned. ‘I make no promises.’

‘Do you ever wonder, cousin, whether the reason you want her is because you cannot have her?’

‘There is nothing I cannot have, cousin,’ said Snorri, laughing as he was ushered silently through the gate and into the temple. ‘I am the prince of Karaz-a-Karak!’

‘You are a fool.’

Elmendrin’s scowl was fiercer than some ogre chieftains Snorri had met. She was slowly removing the makeshift bandage, and regarded the chewed nubs of his fingers beneath. ‘They were bitten off?’ she asked, reaching for a salve and bidding an attendant to bring a bowl of clean water.

‘I was rat hunting in the lower deeps of Karak Krum,’ Snorri explained, smiling broadly and looking into Elemendrin’s eyes. ‘Sapphires do not sparkle as brightly,’ he said in a low voice.

They were more like steel as the priestess pierced the prince with a gimlet gaze.

‘Rats?’

Snorri’s brow furrowed and he tried to gesture with his arms.

Elmendrin snapped at him. ‘Sit still!’

‘But they were big rats, massive, and carrying blades.’

She scowled again. The expression seemed near fixed in Snorri’s presence. ‘Vermin do not bear weapons. I see no hero before me, I see the spoilt son of a king with a swollen ego.’ She examined the hand further. ‘At least your cousin has bound it properly. The wound has clotted.’

Carefully, she began dabbing the stumps of Snorri’s fingers with cloth and ointment. He winced, receiving another reproachful look from the priestess.

‘It stings,’ he complained.

Elmendrin rolled her eyes and continued cleaning the wound.

The temple of Valaya was a simple enough chamber. A place of healing, it contained baths and ranks of cots. But it was also a place of worship and the statue of the ancestor goddess stood proudly at the back of the room, overseeing the work of her handmaidens. Valaya was depicted wearing robes, over which was a skirt of chainmail. She bore no helm, though she was a warrior goddess, and her long plaits fell either side of her ample bosom. Her hands were clasped beneath her chest and a gold circular plate sat in front of the statue, engraved with the goddess’s rune.

Low lantern light painted the temple in hues of deep red and orange. The air was thick with the smell of unguents and healing incense. There were also several large beer barrels filled with the kind of restorative no dwarf would ever refuse or doubt the medicinal properties of.

Several priestesses roamed about, bringing fresh water from the wells or salves and balms from the stores. There were a few other injured dwarfs being tended, miners mostly, but due to the size of the chamber the prince had Elmendrin all to himself. A fact he intended to make the most of.

‘I have many scars,’ he said, ‘from the many battles I have fought in.’

Elmendrin kept her eyes on her work. ‘Indeed.’

‘See here,’ said the prince, twisting to show off a jagged red mark down his left side. ‘See…’ he repeated. With an exasperated sigh, Elmendrin looked up.

Snorri smiled. ‘From an urk cleaver, wielded by a chieftain. I cut off his head and mounted it on my banner pole. During the wars of my father, I killed many urk and grobi, milady. See how it has made my arm strong…’ Shirtless, his armour resting at the side of the cot where he was sitting, Snorri flexed his bicep and was gratified by the bulge he saw.

Elmendrin was unimpressed.

‘I do not know,’ she said, turning back to tending Snorri’s hand, ‘why you have removed your upper garments when it is just your hand that is injured.’ Wound cleaned, she began to rebind the ruined fingers with fresh bandages, muttering imprecations to Valaya as she did so.

Snorri leaned in to whisper in her ear, ‘Would you like me to remove the lower garments too?’

Elmendrin met his gaze, their lips not quite touching. The prince’s confidence eroded with the sudden prospect of intimacy. She purred, ‘Not unless you wish to be a prancing ufdi for the amusement of your father’s court, a bard with the voice of a beardling.’ She held a pair of prising tongs, the kind used to extract chips of wood or metal from a wound, and held them close to the prince’s crotch.

Snorri paled. ‘Not the dongliz…’ he said, and recoiled.

She smiled humourlessly, set the prising tongs down. ‘I thought not.’ Elmendrin finished tying off the bandage, binding it over tightly and bringing another wince to the prince’s face. ‘There, it is done. May Valaya bless you and keep the wound from festering. It’ll be a while before you can shoot a crossbow again, my prince.’

Snorri examined the finely tended wound, ‘Aye, you might be right at that. My sincerest thanks, milady,’ he said with genuine affection.

Despite her prickly veneer, Elmendrin blushed and turned away to wash her hands. Heat was radiating off her skin and she felt a tightening in her stomach.

‘I am sorry, I-’ Snorri began, slightly flustered. ‘What I mean to say is I-’ He reached out to touch her shoulder, admiring the way her violet robes framed her stout body and the flaxen locks bound into a ponytail that draped down her back.

She was broad chested, with a short stubby nose and strong cheekbones, a fine rinn and a worthy wife of any king. But it was her fire that Snorri so admired, her kindness and poise lacking in some dwarf women, some of whom had greater and longer beards than their dwarf men. He had spoken none of this to Morgrim, for to do so would damage the image he had worked to cultivate in his cousin’s eyes. But here, alone with Elmendrin, he had no need for such disguise.

Alas, he also found that words deserted him.

‘Do not speak further, my prince.’ Her head was bowed when she faced him, but she met his gaze furtively.

‘Let us not be prince and priestess,’ he said, swallowing his sudden anxiety. ‘Rather, we could be Snorri and Elmendrin.’

Elmendrin was about to answer, her lips framing a word, when another voice intruded.

‘I heard of your wounding, Prince Snorri,’ said a warrior in the garb of a reckoner. He wore chainmail over a leather hauberk and pauldrons of black leather, and carried an iron helmet in the crook of his arm. A small leather book along with several scroll cases was fastened to his broad belt. There was room for an axe too, or hammer, but its loop was empty. No weapons of any kind were allowed in the temple of Valaya. It was a sanctuary devoted to healing and protection, not a place to shed blood in anger. ‘But I did not realise it went beyond your hand. Were you also stabbed?’ the reckoner asked.

Annoyed at the interruption, Snorri stood up and started to dress. As he hauled on his overshirt, he replied, ‘Just my hand, Grimbok.’

Forek Grimbok was removing his leather gloves, tucking them into his belt with the rest of his trappings, when he said, ‘Then why is it you need to remove your garments and armour?’ He looked to Elmendrin, sketched a quick bow. ‘Sister.’

‘Forek,’ Elmendrin replied.

The reckoner was lean, with a thin face for a dwarf and an aquiline nose. His black beard was neatly trimmed and tidy, but still retained its length. His accent was cultured, for as well as reckoning for the king, he was also a gifted ambassador and negotiator.

Snorri met Forek’s iron gaze without flinching. ‘I asked the lady Elmendrin to rub salts and salve into my back and neck. When fighting all day in your armour, a dwarf tends to develop a tightness in the shoulders that requires the tender mercies of the priestesses. But I doubt you would be aware of that given the reckoners’ deeds are generally confined to seeking recompense from other dwarfs, or am I wrong?’

Forek’s face reddened at the obvious slight but he didn’t bite, not yet. ‘I serve your father, the High King,’ he said, ‘as do you, Prince Snorri.’

Snorri laughed. ‘You and I are not so alike as that, reckoner.’ He strapped on his armour, attached his vambraces. ‘I assume you’re here to take me to him.’

Livid with barely contained anger, Forek’s next words almost came through clenched teeth. ‘Indeed I am. You have much to explain.’

‘Not to you, Grimbok,’ said Snorri, flashing a smile at Elmendrin that elicited a scowl from the priestess.

Forek gave her a warning glance, escorting Snorri from the temple in silence.

‘I know you covet my sister,’ he hissed once they had their weapons and were headed for the Great Hall.

Snorri kept his eyes forwards, nodding to the clan warriors and guilders they met along the way. ‘It’s the only thing I like about you, Forek.’

‘What, my sister?’

‘No. Your boldness. One day it’s going to get you in trouble.’

‘Threats do not become a prince of Karaz-a-Karak, my lord.’

Snorri laughed, loud and hearty like they were two old friends sharing a joke. ‘It’s not a threat.’

Anything further would have to wait. Thurbad Shieldbearer waited at the end of the corridor, muscled arms folded across his chest. He had removed his vambraces and torcs banded his brawny skin instead.

As Snorri approached, he stepped aside without a word and the iron-banded doors into the Great Hall opened with an ominous creak of hinges.