The Great Betrayal

III

High King Snorri Whitebeard emerged at the edge of the battle through a jagged tear of light. Tendrils of lightning still played across his pauldrons and rivulets of power spilled over his breastplate as the magic he had employed was slow to dissipate.

The cohort of five hundred hearthguard who greeted him tried not to appear shocked at his sudden arrival, for the elder rune on the High King’s hammer was slaved to his throne, the earthing point for its magic. Only half hiding his smile, enjoying the little piece of theatre, Snorri ascended the stone steps of the immense throne awaiting him.

An artefact from an ancient age, forged when the ancestor gods still roamed the deeps of the world, the Throne of Power was unique. It bore the Rune of Eternity, believed to have been inscribed upon its high back by Grungni. The dwarf name for it was Azamar, a rune so potent that nothing in existence could destroy it.

Fifty paces ahead of the High King were the backs of the gronti-duraz lumbering alongside the warrior clans and brotherhoods. Another hundred paces beyond them were the daemons and one of their masters. Snorri eyed the bloated lord with vengeful relish just as the stone-clad giants began to part, letting him through.

‘Thronebearers.’ The High King’s voice was a deep rumble as he spoke to his retainers. ‘Bring me to war.’

‘Khazuk!’ Grunting with effort, four burly dwarfs lifted king and throne aloft. Singing their deathsongs, they began to march.

The hearthguard fell in beside them. Thanes borne on their own war shields ordered their clansdwarfs to gather around the king’s throng as he passed them, flanked on either side by the gronti-duraz. Snorri nodded to them, though the creations of metal and stone could not respond.

Vagrumm, his standard bearer, bellowed above the din of tramping boots and clashing shields to announce him.

‘For Karaz-a-Karak! In the name of the ancestors and the High King!’

‘Khazuk!’ the throng replied.

A last bulwark of mail parted before the High King, the vanguard of the dwarf army hearing their liege-lord’s return and rejoicing. Their ranks bowed aside only to reform again behind the hearthguard as slowly they reached the front where the fighting raged.

No sooner had he joined the front, than Snorri was immediately embattled.

A daemonic tallyman flung itself at the High King but was cut in half before it could land a blow. Rotten viscera sizzled on the ground but turned into mist where it touched the Throne of Power, the rune of Azamar flaring brightly. Another daemon was smashed asunder by the thronebearers as they pushed against the horde, trying to throw them back.

Hearthguard were hacking great inroads into the daemonic ranks, whilst the other thane-kings wrought similar carnage on either side of the king’s throng.

It was wide, a two-hundred-foot hammer-head driven deep into the heart of the enemy. With Snorri leading them, the dwarf advance was inexorable and devastating. His sheer presence, and the innate resistance of the dwarfs, seemed to drain the creatures of Chaos, and as the fell magic drenching the plain waned, so too did the corporeal bonds binding the lesser daemons to it. Plague-infested corpses began to dissipate, cast back into the Realm of Chaos. Sloughing away, burning down to bone and ash, dissipating into smoke, hundreds of daemons surrendered to instability and were banished.

The tide turned.

Like an armoured plough scything a field of pestilential wheat, the dwarfs slew every Chaos beast that came before them until the High King was face-to-face with the bloated lord himself.

Alkhor chuckled at this reckoning. The bloated lord was many times larger than Snorri and towered over the dwarf until its shadow eclipsed the entire Throne of Power. It seemed to relish the fight to come.

Snorri was only too happy to oblige. Feet braced either side of his ancestral seat, he stood up to level his axe at the daemonic prince.

‘Now you are mine.’