The Great Betrayal

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

City of the Hill King

Perched like an ugly bird of prey on a rocky tor, the city of the hill dwarfs glowered down on the boulder-strewn valley around it with disdain. Its watchtowers and stout walls offered a peerless view that stretched for miles, all the way to the edge of a treeline where the forest became a sea of fir and pine. Flanked by jutting crags of rock, the only way to gain an audience with the king of the hill was to climb. After the High King of Karaz-a-Karak had visited with two hundred of his warriors, Skarnag Grum had commanded the old sloped concourse demolished. Back then entire wagon trains, two abreast, with mules and trappings, could be let up to his gates. Now, if Gotrek Starbreaker returned to try and cow the hill king in his own hall again he would do so without his throne and all his retainers.

A narrow path wended the last few hundred feet to the city gates, but even this was treacherous. A long fall awaited any dwarf who slipped on the scree underfoot and sharp rocks that bullied onto the trail at intervals made safe navigation difficult. The hill dwarfs mainly used ropes and baskets dangled from the walls to send and receive supplies. It was awkward, but Skarnag Grum would have it no other way.

Defensively, the approach to Kazad Kro was both well watched by scores of crossbowmen but also forced attackers and visitors alike into a single file.

Its message was simple, Leave us alone. Although King Grum did welcome trade, he preferred it to camp outside his halls. Tents and temporary lodgings were a common sight ringing the borders of Kazad Kro. Anything so as long as the gold kept flowing into his coffers.

Krondi had felt far from welcomed as he made his last weary steps into the city. A fat tongue of gold shimmered underfoot in the light of a low sun. Here, in the kingdom of the hill dwarfs, the streets were literally paved with gold. Flagstones and viaducts of the soft metal were everywhere, a proud boast and a declaration of wealth. To Krondi it looked wasteful and ostentatious. He had been on the road for three days already, with the sore back and the blistered feet to prove it. But despite his fatigue he would not allow the rough threshold of Kazad Kro to deter him from seeking out the justice of the king. According to its captain, Zakbar Varf was under the auspice of the hill kings and any charge of poor dealings or a plea for reckoning would have to go to them.

Not since his old campaigning days had Krondi felt the same wrath and desire to enact vengeance against an enemy as he did now. Of the party that had left Zakbar Varf, he alone had walked the long road to the summit of Kazad Kro. Every step he took, his ire for the indignity visited upon him at the trading outpost had increased.

After what felt like another day, he had at last reached the great gilded gate of the city. A huge effigy of the king was emblazoned upon it in relief, and the guards on the wall had granted admittance reluctantly. Wary eyes had watched him as he passed beneath the vaulted stone arch, and an escort of warriors had met him as soon as he set foot into the city proper. Krondi didn’t know what had transpired when the High King had come to Kazad Kro but it had certainly soured the attitude of some of its citizens.

For outsiders, hill dwarfs were hard to distinguish from those who lived beneath the earth under the mountains, but Krondi could see the differences well enough. Fairer haired with sun-baked skin, they stood a little taller or less stooped on account of the fact they didn’t spend all of their days crawling through tunnels. But they weren’t as broad and the layer of soot and grit commonplace under the nails of all but the best preened of dwarfs wasn’t present in the hill folk.

In spite of these differences, Krondi had still felt a kinship with them as he passed through their smithies and fletchers, markets and jewel-cutters, and hoped the king would have the same empathy for his mountain brethren too.

Sadly, the old dwarf campaigner would be disappointed.

Krondi was now kneeling in the hold hall of the king himself, his back still aching, his feet still sore and his pride more wounded than ever.

‘Lower…’ the voice uttered again, hoarse with age or overuse, putting him in mind of a crow by the way it rasped. It wasn’t hard to imagine beetling little eyes like black pearls, the suggestion of a hooked beak in the shape of the king’s nose, the avian sweep of his cheekbones and receding hairline, black fading to pepper grey at the fringes.

‘I am as low as I can get.’ Krondi attempted to stoop further, but a sharp pain in his knee prevented him sinking much more than another inch or two.

Evidently dissatisfied, the crow-king squawked again, ‘Rundin, help this dawi show the proper obeisance.’

Krondi glared up under his eyebrows, muttering an oath. The hill king stared back, bird-like and imperious. Something glittered in his dark little eyes. It might have been pleasure.

A heavy-armoured dwarf behind Krondi put a meaty hand on his shoulder. It felt like a mason’s block. Leaning, exerting a little pressure as he did so, the warrior whispered into Krondi’s ear, ‘I’m sorry, brother,’ and pushed.

Failing to hide a grimace, Krondi sank another half a foot.

‘Am I to kneel or genuflect?’ he grumbled under his breath.

‘Better,’ said the king. ‘Now rise.’

The dwarf called Rundin tried to help him back up, but Krondi shook off his hand. ‘I can manage well enough,’ he snapped, to which the other dwarf merely nodded and stepped back. ‘And he is not my king,’ he hissed between his teeth.

Skarnag Grum sat upon a gilded throne. A long stairway of stone steps led up to it, crested by a circular dais engraved with runes. Beringed fingers, festooned with gems, clacked loudly against the golden arms of the throne as the king vented his impatience. A jewel-encrusted gold crown sat upon his head, so large and grandiose his neck was braced with an aureate gorget to support it.

Though his gilded trappings, his armour and royal vestments shone, the king did not. Unlike most of the other hill dwarfs, Skarnag Grum’s skin was pale and waxy. Krondi fancied if held up to the light of a lantern you would see his bones and organs through the thin parchment of his flesh.

Overlong nails and black-rimed teeth spoke of matters occupying the king’s mind that exceeded the necessity for personal grooming. Even his beard, also festooned with gems and ingots of precious metals, was unkempt.

Apart from his warrior protector, Krondi and the king were alone in the grand hall of Kazad Kro. Like its liege-lord it was opulent, with tall shining columns of stone and a wide aisle of silver flagstones that led to the vaulted throne itself. Banners and tapestries lined the walls, hinted at by the flickering embers of brazier pans suspended from the high ceiling on gold-plated chains. Furs and silks lay strewn in a penumbral gloom not so far removed from the dwarf halls beneath the mountains, though some of the materials were distinctly elven in origin.

Krondi’s warrior instincts had not been completely dulled by his time as a merchant under Nadri Gildtongue and though he could not see them, he felt the presence of further guards lurking in the darkness and knew then why the hill king had devised his hold hall in this way.

‘Speak then,’ said Grum, wafting his hand disinterestedly in Krondi’s vague direction. ‘Time is precious, dawi.’

Krondi was still trying to work out if the hill king had meant the last word as an insult when he cleared his throat and said in a loud voice, ‘Let it be known, on this day did-’

‘No, no, no,’ snapped the king, scowling and slashing a clawlike hand through the air as if to cut Krondi off from speaking further. ‘No declarations, no oaths or grudgement.’ He exhaled, as if already tired of the exchange when it had barely begun. ‘You have come from Zakbar Varf, yes?’

Shocked at the hill king’s flagrant disregard for the accepted tradition of voicing a grievance, Krondi nodded mutely.

‘And you claim to have been cheated by elgi merchants?’

Krondi found his voice. ‘They said they were weaponsmiths, and it is no claim. It’s true, my lord.’

‘Liege.’

Krondi frowned. ‘Your pardon, my lord?’

‘I am a king, High King of the Skarrenawi, and thus you will address me as liege.’

Taking a deep breath, Krondi said, ‘Yes, I was cheated, my liege, and as Zakbar Varf is an outpost of the skarrenawi I have come to seek reckoning against the elgi.’

Dutifully silent until that moment, Rundin stepped forwards to speak on the merchant’s behalf. ‘I believe there is a case for grudgement here, my king, and can have our reckoners ready in the hour.’

Grum shook his head to dismiss the idea. ‘Not necessary,’ he said, then eyed the other dwarf sternly. ‘Explain to me how you were duped, dawi. What did the elgi do that was so heinous you feel the need to disturb me in my hall and demand restitution? Eh?’

Krondi flushed with anger, but kept his temper. In his battlefield days he had killed for lesser slights against his honour. Shucking off a laden pack he carried on his back, he kneeled and unfurled a leather satchel of blades.

Grum recoiled, scowling. ‘You dare bring weapons into my hall!’

Rundin interceded again. His hands were raised and he glanced at the darkness behind the throne, giving the slightest shake of the head to the guards Krondi now knew were posted there.

‘These are just his wares, my king.’ He looked down at the assorted blades, hammers and hafts. ‘And a poor lot at that.’

Krondi nodded to the other dwarf, finding him to be honourable and just, much more so than his king at any rate.

‘Gold exchanged hands, much of it,’ said Krondi, inadvertently piquing the hill king’s interest, ‘for what was a clutch of battered swords, spears and arrows.’

The weapons were certainly well worn, with chipped blades and blunted heads. Little better than battlefield leavings, it was hard to conceive of why even the most naïve of traders would part with coin for such a sorry cache.

‘Did you not inspect them before purchase?’ asked Grum, incredulous.

‘Of course.’ Krondi lowered his voice at an unspoken rebuke from Rundin. ‘Of course,’ he repeated more calmly, ‘but they did not look as this.’

‘Then how is it that they do now?’

‘What else?’ Krondi said, nonplussed at the hill king’s failure to grasp his meaning. ‘Sorcery. Elgi magic. They enchanted the blades to make them appear to be priceless artefacts.’

Grum tutted. There was more shaking of the head, much stroking of his lank beard. A small gold coin had appeared in his left hand and he was rolling it across his knuckles.

‘A bad business,’ he conceded, ‘for which you have my sympathies.’ Grum beckoned to the shadows. Four burly dwarfs in heavy armour and full-faced helms emerged into the hall.

‘Agreed,’ said Krondi, ‘so what is to be done about it?’

The throne bearers were already lifting the opulent hill king and his throne off the ground when Grum turned to the merchant with a confused expression and said, ‘Nothing. Fools beget what they beget. I will not waste coin on sending reckoners on a pointless errand. Do I look profligate to you, dawi?’

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

The hill king raised his hand and the bearers stopped.

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

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

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

Rundin was about to oblige when Krondi snarled at him.

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

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

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

‘He is my king,’ said Rundin.

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

At that Krondi stalked out of the hall.

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