The Great Betrayal

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Against the Glittering Host

Snorri’s feet were aching. Even in his boots, robust as they were and made from dwarf leather, the frost-bitten ground had taken a toll. Declining the offer of a palanquin, a throne and bearers to carry him, the prince had joined the ranks at the head of the army. Better they see him that way, as one of them, a dwarf warrior first and a prince second.

‘I thought marching in winter was only something mad or desperate generals did?’ groaned Morgrim, whose bunions were the size of chestnuts. He and several hearthguard from Everpeak protected the prince’s right flank and strode in lockstep with him.

‘Who’s to say I am not one or both?’ Snorri replied. ‘Although, if anyone asks I’ll say you convinced me do it.’

They shared a fraternal grin, something that had been lacking in their relationship of late but had oddly warmed with the onset of winter.

‘We are close, Snorri,’ uttered Drogor, on the prince’s left amongst a second cadre of hearthguard. Now a thane with holdings in Everpeak come the end of the war, Drogor also carried the army standard after the prince’s last bearer was slain by an elven scout during a previous skirmish. It was little more than a raid, the enemy gauging their numbers, but Bron had lost his life as he sounded the alarm.

So many had died already in similar meaningless circumstances. Snorri kept his thoughts on the matter to himself; not even Morgrim or Drogor would know them. It would hurt morale if his kith and kin thought his resolve was wavering.

‘Signal a halt,’ ordered the prince, and Drogor raised the banner.

Horns blared across the marching ranks, which stopped immediately to the clattering discord of settling shields, armour and weapons. Some of the mules brayed before their skinners quietened them with soothing words. The creaking wheels of wagons, carrying provisions, quarrels, spare shields and helms, were the last sound to abate. Some of the larger beasts towed machineries and these were marshalled by engineers and their crew, smothered in tarps for now but ready to be deployed at the prince’s command.

Looking back over his shoulder, beyond the hulking hearthguard, Snorri saw sappers, warriors from over fifty different clans, grey-haired longbeards, quarrellers and rangers, the heavily armoured cohorts of ironbreakers and the dour faces of runesmiths. This was a mustering of some potency, one that would tear down the walls of Tor Alessi with or without his father’s help.

True to his word, Snorri waited seven days for the army of the High King to arrive. But his father was late and the prince’s patience at an end. The reinforcements from Barak Varr had also failed to materialise, so with just over thirty thousand dwarfs at his banner, he had marched.

On the fifth day, a band of rangers had returned from scouting. Their leader, Kundi Firebeard, had said the elves numbered in the region of ten thousand, including cavalry.

‘Heh, what use are horses during a siege?’ Drogor had asked.

‘I have seen riders charge from a gate to sack machineries, kill their crews,’ Morgrim had replied. ‘We shouldn’t underestimate the elgi knights.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Snorri had told them both, ‘we are committed to this now. Riders or not, Tor Alessi will fall.’

In the end the prince had chosen the Brundin road, the stories of monstrous trees coming to life and hellish sprites, however far-fetched, enough to dissuade him from taking the mountains. Expecting resistance, the dwarf throng had marched in a tight column with rangers roaming its flanks and rear. They need not have bothered. No elven war host stood in their way. No scouts harried their advance this time. The dwarfs had been allowed to march on Tor Alessi unimpeded.

Several times since they had set out, Morgrim had voiced concern that their haste would mean the High King’s army was that little bit farther away.

Snorri had dismissed his cousin’s misgivings, stating that thirty thousand dwarfs were more than enough to crack open one elven citadel.

That conviction had not changed.

‘Twenty of the hearthguard with me,’ said Snorri, gesturing to the last rise. Over that and they would see the port city and its defences relatively close up for the first time. ‘You too, cousin.’

Led by the prince the dwarfs climbed up the boulder-strewn ridge, descending to their bellies as they neared the summit in case elven spotters were watching the approach and had ready quarrels to hand.

Snorri was the first to reach the top and peer over the edge.

The city was distant, still another hour’s march away, and the dwarf army would be revealed long before they reached it. Bigger than Snorri first imagined, Tor Alessi was erected around a port and used most of the coastline in its defences. Aside from rugged, impenetrable cliffs facing out towards the sea, high walls surrounded a core of inner buildings and there were three large gatehouses. Elven devices, the eagle, dragon rampant and the rising phoenix, were emblazoned on each. Snorri counted three massive towers amongst lesser minarets and minor citadels. There was a large keep, appended in part to the port, and this was protected by a second defensive wall with only one gate. Impressive as it was, what surrounded the elven city surprised the dwarf prince more.

‘I did not know it was at the centre of a lake,’ said Morgrim, as if speaking Snorri’s thoughts aloud.

Snorri reached for a spyglass offered by one of his hearthguard and peered down the lens.

‘It’s no lake…’ he breathed after a few seconds. Putting down the spyglass, he licked his lips to moisten the sudden dryness. ‘It’s an army.’

An undulating ribbon of almost endless silver surrounded the outskirts of Tor Alessi, a vast host of elves that glittered in the winter sun. Pennons attached to the lances of knights whipped around on the breeze coming down off the ridge and numerous ranks of spearmen stood in ready formation with rows of archers to their rear.

‘Grungni’s hairy arse…’ muttered one of the hearthguard.

Morgrim ignored him, pointing to the elven right flank. ‘There,’ he said, ‘machineries.’

Snorri had seen them during the brodunk, elven chariots drawn by horses. There were at least a hundred in a close-knit squadron, scythed wheels catching the light and shimmering like star-fire.

He cast his gaze skywards and felt suddenly foolish for their attempts at subterfuge. Circling above were flocks of birds. Not like the screech hawks, talon owls or griffon vultures of the peaks, these were giant eagles with claws and beaks like blades.

Snorri lowered the spyglass for the second time.

‘Looks like they’re expecting us,’ he said to the others.

‘It explains why the road became suddenly empty,’ said Morgrim.

‘Because they were all here.’

Snorri got to his feet, seeing no point in stealth any more. ‘I am no engineer, but a sight more than ten thousand wouldn’t you say, cousin?’

Morgrim nodded slowly, taking in the glittering host in all its shining glory.

‘What do you want to do?’

The prince sniffed disdainfully, hiking up his belt.

‘First I want to punish Kundi Firebeard for his abject stupidity, then I want to march down there and kill some thagging elgi.’

It wasn’t like Kor Vanaeth and the clash for the gate. Nadri had never fought in open pitched battle before. Before the short siege at the elven city, he had never donned axe and shield in anything more than a skirmish. Unlike Krondi had been, he wasn’t a campaigner or a soldier; though he knew his axecraft as all clansmen did, he was a merchant. With war unleashed upon the land, Nadri had exchanged gold for blood as his currency.

It was proving a difficult trade.

Two dwarf war hosts had descended the ridge into the teeth of the elven hordes. His liege-lord King Brynnoth led one, his cup of vengeance not even half full from Agrin Fireheart’s untimely death. The other was led by Valarik of Karak Hirn, though Nadri did not know him except by sight.

Arrows met them at first, a heavy rain of steel-fanged death that reaped a lesser tally than the pointy-ears had hoped. Dwarfs knew defence as well as attack, and their formations were peerless. Locking shields front, back, to the flanks and above, several large cohorts had weathered the arrow storm with almost no casualties. But for the uncanny accuracy of the elven archers, no dwarf blood would have been spilled at all.

Dismayed at such resilience, the elven lordlings had called for their cavalry. Clarion horns, shrilling much higher than the pipes of Barak Varr, had signalled the charge. The earth shook with the pounding of the knightly horse, and had made Nadri’s teeth chatter.

Even in the third rank, behind kith and kin he had known most of his life, he felt the impact of elven lance. It tore into them despite their organised shield wall, raked a great ragged cleft, and left them bleeding. With dogged tenacity, the dwarfs had closed, holding though the urge to run was strong.

Now they were locked with the high-helmed elven knights, matching axe and hammer to longsword.

Sweeping out his arm, Nadri felt more than saw his axe cleave horseflesh. The beast whinnied, its caparison shedding against his well-honed blade. It cut the saddle belt too, plunging the rider into the mass where he slashed wildly for a few moments before he was lost beneath a hail of hammer blows.

Something smacked into his shoulder, and he was about to strike when he realised it was Yodri, a fellow clanner. The old dwarf risked a gap-toothed grin when he saw Nadri’s face. The merchant smiled back, grim rather than humorous, before Yodri’s expression slackened, the longsword through his neck puncturing his good mood. The blade withdrew with a meaty schluk! before it struck down on Nadri, who had enough about him to raise his shield. A thick dent appeared on the underside next to where he’d pressed his cheek. A third blow took a chip of the shield’s edge, allowing a narrow aperture through which to see his attacker.

Cold fury lit the knight’s face, a snarl growing on his lips with every determined blow. He swung again, Nadri unable to manage any reply, tearing the shield from the dwarf’s agonised grasp. Rearing horse hooves put Nadri on his back and he half expected to be ground into paste by them before a heavy shaft punched the beast’s flank and sent it and rider sprawling.

‘Grimnir’s balls, it’s a good job them thaggers from the Varn are accurate!’ said one of the Copperfist clan that Nadri couldn’t place at first.

It was Werigg Gunnson, an old friend of his father’s.

Nadri looked to where Werigg was pointing. King Ironhandson’s engineers were loosing their ballistae, and the bolt throwers were exacting a heavy price from the knights, whose armour meant little against the thick arrow shafts.

Overhead, there came the heavy whomp of stone throwers loosing their cargo. The dwarfs of Karak Varn were neglecting the walls in favour of punishing the stranded cavalry. Through the melee, where the press of bodies and the thicket of limbs had thinned, he saw a swathe of dwarf dead, cut up by the chariots. Here the stone throwers struck next, rewarded for their efforts as one of the elven machineries exploded in a storm of wood, bone and flesh. Blood slicked the flung rock, painting it in a greasy line as it rolled to a halt.

‘Either that or the blind buggers are just lucky, eh?’ Nadri felt rough hands drag him to his feet and saw a grizzled-looking dwarf facing him. ‘Up yer get, lad. More killing to be done.’

Still dazed, Nadri grabbed a shield, not caring if it was his own, and saw the knights had broken off their attack and were retreating towards the city gates. A host of spearmen, out of range of the war machines and thus far unscathed, parted to let them through. Then they closed ranks and lowered their pikes at the badly bloodied dwarfs.

‘See,’ said the old-timer, hawking up a gob of pipeweed he’d been chewing. ‘Plenty more.’

Nadri eyed the determined elven phalanx even as the dwarfs drew back into formation, raising shields as the arrow storm began anew, and groaned.

His retinue of hearthguard just below, Snorri surveyed the battle from a grassy tor through the spyglass. This was but an opening skirmish and though he had wanted badly to lead it, knew his place as army general was here.

Brynnoth was ever wrathful and had insisted on leading the first attack. Though brave, the clans of Barak Varr were being hammered by the elves. During the skirmish, arrows had killed a great many dwarfs and left countless more for the ministrations of the priestesses of Valaya. Even as the battle raged, the dour warrior maidens roamed the field, dragging back the wounded or silencing those beyond help. Since the initial charge and subsequent breaking of the high-helmed cavalry, the dwarf front line had advanced considerably. Met by a thick wall of heavy-armoured spearmen, their march had now halted. Though difficult to ascertain through the spyglass, it looked like the two forces were at an impasse. From a brutal opening skirmish with a splintered cavalry force, the dwarfs now faced a determined grind.

Snorri smiled despite the grimness of the vista. Dwarfs knew how to fight battles of attrition. Even with their spears and high shields, the elves would soon learn the folly of these tactics. Unwilling to loose directly into the fighting ranks, the elven archers unleashed volleys of arrows in the air and the prince of Everpeak watched their deadly trajectory until they fell amongst the rear ranks. Pushing hard against the backs of their fellow clanners in order to roll the elven line, many dwarfs had their shields front and were struck down. Several ranks lay dead before a proper defence stalled further casualties. Quarrellers attempted to reply in kind, but the dwarf crossbowmen had neither the range nor the accuracy to be effective.

Panning the lens across the melee Snorri found Brynnoth, or at least several of his royal hearthguard, the Sea Wardens, battling furiously in the centre. The king would be amongst them, at their heart, and strong as he was the elves were showing no signs of capitulation. Several large cohorts, including those from Everpeak, were ready as reinforcement. With almost a third of his army committed already, Snorri was reluctant to feed any more into the grind.

He considered employing the war machines to thin the elven ranks, but the proximity of dwarf warriors made it too risky. Without the need to punish the knights, they were standing dormant so Snorri gave the signal for them to be brought forwards and batter the walls instead.

A drum beat was followed by the raising of banners down the line until the message from the prince was conveyed to Ironhandson and his throwers. A few moments later and a cascade of bolts and boulders assailed Tor Alessi’s walls.

Snorri followed their descent through the spyglass, grumbling in dismay as an arc of lightning tore one stone from the sky, disintegrating the missile in a shower of debris. Several more went the same way as the elves revealed their mages, casting fire and ice from their fingertips to blunt the dwarf barrage. A few missiles struck but the damage they caused was negligible to a city that size. Bolts from the ballistae were snatched out of the very air by flocks of the great eagles, the massive birds of prey snapping them in their vice-like claws before diving down onto the machineries themselves.

Engulfed by a swarm of flapping feathers and flashing silver beaks, dozens of dwarf crewmen and engineers lay dead before Ironhandson restored order with his rangers and saw the beasts off.

‘It is harder than I thought,’ Snorri confessed under his breath.

‘We knew the elgi were tough, cousin, but we are tougher,’ Morgrim reassured him.

‘Do you think this is their entire force?’

Morgrim frowned, watching the battle from afar without the benefit of the spyglass, and shook his head.

‘The city will harbour a second army, I am sure.’

‘We have to crack the gates anyway,’ suggested Drogor, his grip tight on the banner where it snapped in the breeze. ‘A stern push would sweep this force away and let us bring the fight to the walls.’

‘Lay siege?’ asked Snorri, looking askance at the Karak Zorn dwarf.

‘No, forge a hammer and break down the gates. Once inside the elgi’s resolve will waver.’

Snorri rubbed his bearded chin. The entire throng on the field was engaged. Two thick lines of infantry cut and hewed at one another with neither willing to yield. The arrows levelled the scales for the elves, preventing the dwarf line from a concerted push, but the clans were gaining ground on the walls.

‘It’s not a bad idea.’

Morgrim disagreed. ‘Patience is more prudent, Snorri. We grind the elves down, then retreat to our lines and lay siege.’

‘I want this over quickly. No elgi rabble is going to defy me.’

Drogor said, ‘Perhaps Morgrim is right. Hurt the elgi at the gates, sound a retreat and surround them.’

Morgrim was nodding, surprised that his old friend was agreeing with him.

‘Besides,’ added Drogor. ‘It’s likely your father will have arrived by then with the army from Karaz-a-Karak. There would be no shame in leaning on his larger throng.’

His mood souring swiftly, Morgrim tried to intercede. ‘That is not what I meant, cousin-’

‘Enough!’ The spyglass snapped shut, revealing the anger-reddened features of the prince. ‘I will not have my father come here and see this place intact. It will be rubble by the time he reaches the field.’ Snorri donned his war helm, the feathered wings fluttering in the breeze. He spoke at Morgrim, glaring around the nose guard. ‘I’m ordering the reinforcements in. Sound the clarion. I’ll lead them myself.’

Shield forwards, shoulder locked, Nadri was pinned. He found himself in the third rank of the Copperfists, pushing hard against the wall of elven spears. In such tight confines, there was no room for axe work, save for those chopping frantically at the front. Several dwarfs had already fallen to spear thrusts, their anger blunted on high shields over which almond-shaped eyes glared with contempt.

Unlike the fight against the knights, which was a maddened frenzy of plunging lances and flailing horses as the cavalry sought to rip the dwarfs open, this was a strength-sapping grind. Heave and push. Heave and push. Dwarf and elf shoved against one another, pressing with all the weight of their formations until one bent and broke.

So far, the contest was evenly matched.

Impossible to tell for sure, but Nadri felt like it was the same across the line. One shield wall had met another, though the elven forest of spears was making hard work of it for the dwarfs. As warriors died on both sides, those behind filled their place. From the front rank, which was brutal even from his position two rows behind, Nadri heard a grunt. Another dwarf had fallen, arterial crimson jetting from his neck and blinding the one behind him who also died to a quick thrust from the white-haired champion leading the cohort of spears.

Suddenly and without realising, Nadri was at the front. A jabbing spear was turned aside by an instinctive parry with his axe haft. A sword blow fell against his shield and stung his shoulder with the impact. He roared, invoking Grungni and Grimnir, thrashed out with his axe. Scale mail parted, shearing off like autumn leaves, and a spearman crumpled trying to hold in his guts. As another warrior took the elf’s place, the champion was pushed closer. His sword flashed, an eldritch blade that bore glowing elven runes of power.

Nadri met the attack with his shield and his defence was almost cloven in half.

Spitting some curse in elvish, the white-haired champion swung again. This time Nadri ducked and the rune sword shaved off the sea dragon device on his helmet.

Like his kin, the elf was dressed in blue-grey robes, his armour like polished azure, only metal and much more unyielding. He wore a conical helm, a star-pattern emblazoned on its nose guard, with a shock of horsehair protruding from the tip.

‘Uzkul elgi!’

A shout came from further down the line, a few places to Nadri’s right. Whilst the other dwarfs fought, their champion, Vrekki Helbeard, stepped forwards. He was pointing at the white-haired elf with the spiked tip of his mattock. The weapon was dark with blood.

Nadri felt a hand grip his shoulder and then heard the gravel voice of Werigg Gunnson in his ear.

‘Let him through, lad,’ he said. ‘Helbeard challenges the elgi.’

‘How, in this?’ asked Nadri, fending off another thrust that nearly took off his ear.

As the challenge was met, the pressure on the dwarfs leavened. Vrekki shouldered up the line and was standing alongside Nadri, the elf champion facing him.

The fighting hadn’t ceased, it merely allowed for the passage of the two warriors so they might meet in combat. No order was given to let through, it was merely understood. Vrekki threw the first blow, taking a chunk from the elf’s shield, and the crushing pressure of the grind returned in earnest.

Through the frenzy, Nadri caught slashes of their duel, although to refer to it thus would not be accurate. Vrekki fought two-handed, using the thick haft of his mattock to parry. Like the elf, he had runes too, and they flashed along the shaft of his weapon and the talisman he wore around his neck.

To Nadri it seemed like many minutes but it was over in seconds.

Vrekki battered the white-haired champion hard, hurling blow upon blow against his shield. It looked like he was winning, until having soaked up all the punishment he was willing to, the elf thrust from beneath the guard of his shield and pierced poor Vrekki’s heart. The champion died instantly, his mouth formed into an inchoate curse.

With their thane’s death, Nadri felt the Copperfists falter. A ripple, almost impossible to discern, fed down their ranks. The elves felt it too and pushed. Two spears came Nadri’s way at once. He parried one, but the other pierced his chest, just below the shoulder, and he cried out. The white-haired champion had discarded his shield and fought only with his sword. Pinioned and in agony, Nadri was an easy kill. But before the deathblow came, he flung his axe. It turned one and a half times in the air then embedded itself in the elf’s face, splitting his nose in two and carving into his skull like an egg.

He fell, brutally, and the momentum shifted again.

There was a cheer of ‘Khazuk!’ of which Nadri was only vaguely aware, before the push came again. It pressed him into the spear that was pinning him and he roared in pain and anger. Unarmed, there was little he could do but hold up his shield and pray to Valaya it would be enough. At either side, though he couldn’t move to look properly, he felt his fellow clanners hacking with their blades.

‘Take it, lad!’ Werigg bellowed from behind, a hammer slipped into Nadri’s grasp which he used to smash the spear haft jutting from his chest. The immense pressure of the other dwarf’s considerable bulk levelled against his back followed swiftly after as Werigg got his head down and pushed.

The elves were reeling, on their heels and close to capitulation. Like a ship, the dwarfs its starboard, the elves port, the line pitched and yawed as both sides fought for supremacy. More tenacious than they had any right to be, the elves held on.

‘Khazuk!’ the Copperfists yelled, but still could find no breach in their enemy’s resolve.

A foot… two… then three, the dwarfs gained ground by bloody increments but the elves would not yield.

Amazed he was still alive, Nadri forgot the pain from his chest and bludgeoned spearmen with his borrowed hammer.

‘Uzkul!’ he cried as a splash of crimson lined his face like a baptism, echoing Vrekki, honouring the thane’s sacrifice. It was madness, a terrible churn of bodies and blades without end. He wondered briefly if the halls of Grimnir were steeped in such carnage.

A horn rang out, so deep and sonorous as to only be dwarfen, dragging Nadri from his dark reverie.

The elf line trembled, just the lightest tremor at first but then building to a destructive quake. Like a tree hewn at the root and felled by its own weight, the spearmen buckled. It was as if they bent at the middle and were funnelling into the hole where Snorri had forced his wedge of gromril.

Hearthguard were tough, implacable warriors and Snorri had rammed a cohort of a hundred right down the throat of the elven infantry. To see them broken so utterly by the prince’s charge stirred Morgrim’s blood, but it was also reckless.

‘You did this,’ he said, a grimace revealing his displeasure.

‘I did nothing but agree with you, old friend,’ said Drogor with a plaintive tone, though his eyes flashed eagerly to see such carnage wrought upon the elves.

‘He has overstretched and left himself vulnerable.’

Drogor appeared nonplussed, gesturing to the elf ranks.

‘The elgi are in flight, I can see no danger. Your cousin has done what Brynnoth could not, and broken their ranks.’

‘Aye,’ snapped Morgrim, ‘and he will not stop until he’s reached the walls and torn apart the gate. That, or until he’s dead. You goaded him.’ He was nodding, a distasteful sneer on his face. ‘You drew him into this fight by mentioning his father.’ Morgrim turned to the other dwarf, the rows of silent hearthguard Snorri had left behind unmoving like statues behind them. ‘Why?’

‘Snorri, our prince, will do what he wants. It was he who brought an army to these gates, who forged the will of no less than four kings into a throng capable of challenging the elgi in their greatest citadel. Do you really think I, a lowly treasure hunter from the Southlands, could do anything to affect the mind of a dwarf capable of that?’

Morgrim snarled, turning away.

‘Signal Thagdor’s clans. I want Zhufbar prepared to march in support of the prince.’

Drogor didn’t react. His face was set as stone as he lifted the banner.

The elves were running, but to Snorri’s annoyance their flight was not a rout.

Shields as one, spears to the fore, the elves retreated in good order. At the head of the hearthguard, Snorri battered at them. He carried no shield, and instead wielded an axe in either hand.

Hacking away a desperate lunge with the short haft of his hand axe, he buried his rune axe in the attacking elf’s torso. Silver scale and blood shed from the warrior like he was a gutted fish. Snorri whirled, cleaving the forearm of another, splitting apart his shield. A stomp forwards with a heavy boot and he cut the groin of a third elf, bifurcating the spearman all the way to the sternum. A shoulder barge put down a fourth before the prince took a shield smash to the face, which he shrugged off with typical dwarf resilience.

‘Harder than that, you kruti-eaters,’ he spat, hewing down another.

For all the carnage he wreaked, him and his hearthguard who were just as merciless, the elves maintained their ordered retreat.

‘Stand and fight, thagging cowards!’ Snorri raged at the disappearing spearmen, who were edging closer and closer to the wall and the gate.

Within a hundred feet of the defences, the archers took aim again and loosed. With the measured retreat of the spearmen, gaps had begun to appear in the fighting. It was no longer a tightly packed melee with heaving, pushing ranks; rather a patch of open killing ground had materialised between the two forces that was thronged with the dead and dying.

A shaft struck Snorri in his shoulder guard but he ignored it, ignored that the tip had pierced metal and meat. One of the hearthguard took an arrow in the neck, an impossible shot between helm and gorget, and died gurgling his own blood.

Seconds after the first arrow, another shaft hit the prince in the thigh. He cursed once, snapped it and drove on.

‘Into them,’ he bellowed. ‘By Grimnir’s wrath, we’ll overrun the gates!’

A cheer rang out from the nearby clans, but the hearthguard were stoic in silence, determinedly sticking to their task.

The elven shield wall returned, spears levelled like spikes. At some unseen signal they stopped falling back and solidified again, hoping to bulwark the dwarfs against a cliff face of high shields.

Charging, impelled by their prince, the dwarfs hit it hard. Several warriors, not expecting the sudden shift, were impaled and the brutal melee renewed. As elf and dwarf clashed at close quarters, jabbing, hacking, cleaving, the arrow storm continued unabated. Hearthguard warriors lifted their shields to protect the prince, whilst the pushing back ranks were pinioned. Like an anvil the dwarf line had come together, some three thousand warriors of the clans and brotherhoods, fighting shoulder to shoulder against a thin, glittering line of elves. Attrition was simply the reality of war for dwarfs, they weathered it well, used it to break the most determined and numerous of foes. Here against elven skill and discipline that strategy was being sorely tested.

Caught between the will of the spears and the volleys of the archers, the dwarfs were taking a beating.

Snorri tried to change that single-handed. He ploughed into the enemy ranks, splitting them down the middle. A champion, some elven lordling with a shimmering spear and armour of gilded metal, went to impede him. The prince cut him down like he was a common soldier.

Elves recoiled from the vengeful prince. Dwarfs followed him, King Brynnoth leading a determined charge of his own, Valarik too. Like a swelling tide, the sons of Grungni puffed up their chests and became the hammer.

Such discipline the elves possessed, not like the ragged tribes of the greenskins or the feral beasts of the dark wood, but even their resolve was buckling in the face of the dwarf onslaught. And just as it felt as if they were about to break for the last time and surrender the field, white mantlets decorated to look like overlapping swan feathers tilted to reveal the deadly reason why the elves had drawn their enemy on.

Bolt throwers, rank upon rank of them, but not like the dwarf machineries for these racked a quartet of bolts at a time, unleashed a devastating salvo.

‘Mercy of Valaya…’ Snorri breathed, as the spear-thick arrows descended.

Horns were blowing. Nadri heard them above the whipping report of the elven bolt throwers raining down death upon them. Despite the terrible barrage, the Copperfists continued to advance. As they closed on the wall, barely twenty feet away and almost beyond the minimal range of the elven reapers, Nadri saw the gate open into Tor Alessi. There were more warriors within, hard-faced veterans wearing long skirts of mail, adorned with jewelled breastplates and carrying immense two-handed swords.

The spearmen retreated into the relatively narrow aperture, walking backwards unerringly, spears outstretched as they condensed their long shield wall into a tight square of blades angled in every direction.

Without the bolt throwers to skewer them relentlessly, Nadri felt a tremor of relief through the ranks, but it was short lived. Murder holes opened in the walls above, manned by pairs of archers who had fallen back into the city before the spearmen. The storm returned, thickening the air with hundreds of feathered shafts.

Nadri’s shield sprouted more than a dozen arrows in a few seconds.

The hand-to-hand fighting had all but ceased, the spearmen retreating faster than the dwarfs could keep pace and the archers making them pay for every step.

A flash of light and the stink of burned flesh heralded a magical attack. Turning their efforts from destroying the deadly cargo of the siege engines, the elven mages had their eyes fixed on the advancing dwarfs.

From nearby came chanting, a doleful, sombre refrain that fizzled out a second lightning arc before it could strike. Incandescent serpents of amethyst, spears of luminescent jade, the enchanted manifestation of dragon-kind spitting crimson flame, came at the dwarfs in a sorcerous hail that the runesmiths were hard pressed to repel.

Nadri grit his teeth, barely fighting, merely marching against the attack. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck spike, tasted copper in his mouth and smelled the reek of brimstone in his scorched nostrils. The dwarfs resisted, calling upon their natural resilience to harmful magic, channelled it back to the earth, back to rock where it would be safe and dormant.

The king’s banner was aloft; he saw it above the throng, flapping defiantly. It was an order to charge, to run at the gates and bring them down while the elves were in retreat, but the arrow storm was unrelentingly heavy. A pity Werigg had no words of encouragement, but Nadri felt the old solider at his back, his hand on his shoulder if not gripping quite so tight now the battle pressure had lessened.

They got another foot before a second horn was sounded, followed by the beat of drums. The banner dipped, away from the gates. A signal to retreat.

Nadri couldn’t decide if he felt indignant or relieved. They had bled so much to reach this far and gain so little. The bellowed command from one of the thanes further down the line confirmed it.

‘Retreat!’

Nadri was confused. He had always believed there was no word for ‘back’, ‘give up’, in Khazalid. Seemed he was wrong, they all were.

‘That’s it,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Werigg, we lived, we-’

The old soldier’s glassy eyes staring back unblinking supplanted Nadri’s relief with grief. Werigg’s hand was still upon his back, seized with enough rigor to keep it there, his body pressed into the throng unable to fall. A dark patch blotted his armour, running stickily over the mail. A spear tip was lodged in the middle of it, broken off at the end. Nadri remembered the one in his chest, the second one he’d deflected, unknowingly, into Werigg’s gut. A mortal wound. As the dwarfs peeled away and the throng parted, Werigg fell and Nadri wasn’t able to catch him or carry him. Borne away by the urgency of the crowd, he couldn’t stop and the old soldier was lost from his sight.

Snorri cursed, he cursed in as many foul ways as he knew, spitting and raging as the retreat was sounded. He turned briefly, looking over his shoulder to see the throng from Zhufbar heading back to the encampment at the edge of the battlefield. He also saw Morgrim, arms folded after issuing the command.

Cursing again, Snorri flung his hand axe in a final defiant gesture and it stuck in the thick wood of the elven gate like a promise.

We’ll be back, it said, the killing isn’t done, we are not done. Battle has only just begun.

He seethed, marking the face of each and every elf that looked down on him with haughty disdain from the city walls.

‘Khazuk,’ he screamed in promise. ‘Khazuk!’

But the elves didn’t understand, nor did they care.