The Great Betrayal

CHAPTER ONE

Rat Catching

The tunnel was dank and reeked of mould. Darkness thicker than pitch was threaded with the sound of hidden, chittering things. Far from the heat of the forges, here in the lost corridors of the underway, monsters roamed. Or so Snorri hoped.

‘Bring it closer, cousin. I caught a whiff of their stink up ahead.’

Morgrim held the lantern up higher. Its light threw clawing shadows across the walls, illuminating old waymarker runes that had long since fallen into disrepair.

‘Karak Krum,’ uttered the older dwarf, his face framed in the light. A ruddy orange glow limned his black beard, making it look as if it were on fire. ‘The dwarfs there are long since dead, cousin. No one has ventured this deep into the Ungdrin Ankor for many, many years.’

Snorri squinted as he looked at Morgrim over his shoulder.

‘Scared, are you? Thought you Bargrums had spines of iron, cousin.’

Morgrim bristled. ‘Aye, we do!’ he said, a little too loudly.

Two dwarfs, standing alone in a sea of black with but a small corona of lamplight to enfold them, waited. After what felt like an age, the echo of Morgrim’s truculence subsided and he added, ‘I am not scared, cousin, merely thinking aloud.’

Snorri snorted.

‘And who do you think you are, oh brave and mighty dawi, Snorri Whitebeard reborn?’ said Morgrim. ‘You have his name but not his deeds, cousin.’

‘Not yet,’ Snorri retorted with typical stoicism.

Grumbling under his breath, Morgrim traced the runic inscription of the waymarker with a leathern hand. There was dirt under the nails and rough calluses on the palms earned from hours spent in the forge. ‘Don’t you wonder what happened to them?’

‘Who?’

‘The dawi of Karak Krum.’

‘Either dead or gone. You think far too much, and act far too little,’ said Snorri, eyes front and returning to the hunt. ‘Here, look, some of their dung.’

He pointed to a piled of noisome droppings a few inches from his booted foot.

Wrinkling his nose, Morgrim scowled. ‘The reek of it,’ he said. ‘Like no rat I have ever smelled.’

Snorri unhitched his axe from the sheath on his back. He also carried a dagger at his waist and kept it close to hand too. Narrow though it was, he didn’t want to be caught in the tunnel’s bottleneck unarmed.

‘Make a point of sniffing rats, do you, cousin?’ he laughed.

Morgrim didn’t answer. He glanced one last time at the runic marker describing the way to Karak Krum. Passed away or simply moved on when the seams of gold and gems had run dry, dwarfs no longer walked its halls, the forges were silent. Merchants and reckoners from Karaz-a-Karak had brought tales of a glowing rock discovered by the miners of Krum. It had happened centuries ago, the story passed down by his father and his father before him. It was little more than myth now but the stark evidence of the ancient hold’s demise was still very real. Morgrim wondered what would happen if the same fate ever befell Karaz-a-Karak.

Snorri snapped him out of his bleak reverie.

‘More light! This way, cousin.’

‘I hear something…’ Morgrim thumbed the buckle loose on his hammer’s thong and took its haft. Leather creaked in the dwarf’s grip.

From up ahead there emanated a scratching, chittering noise. It sounded almost like speech, except for the fact that both Morgrim and Snorri knew that rats could do no such thing.

Morgrim turned his head, strained his ear. ‘Grobi?’

‘This deep?’

In this part of the underway, the tunnel was low and cramped as if it hadn’t been hewn by dwarfs at all. Such a thing was impossible, wasn’t it? Only dwarfs could dig the roads of the Ungdrin Ankor that connected all the holds of the Worlds Edge Mountains and beyond. And yet…

‘A troll, then?’

Snorri looked back briefly. ‘One that talks to itself?’

‘I once encountered a troll with two heads that talked to itself, cousin.’

Snorri shot Morgrim a dubious look.

‘No. Doesn’t smell right. Can tell a troll from a mile away. Its breath is like a latrine married to an abattoir.’

‘Reminds me of Uncle Fugri’s gruntis.’

Snorri laughed, and they moved on.

A larger cavern loomed ahead of the dwarfs, unseen but with the shape and angle of the opening suggesting a widening threshold, the scent of air and rat together with the sound-echo hinting at a vaulted ceiling. Dwarfs knew rock. They knew it because it was under their nails, on their tongues, in their blood and ever surrounded them.

It was not merely a cavern ahead of the two dwarfs, where the tunnel met its end. It was large and it was a warren infested with rats.

Snorri could hardly contain his excitement.

‘Are you ready, cousin?’ He brought up his axe level with his chest and clutched it two-handed. There was a spike on the end of it that could be used for thrusting, a useful weapon in a tight corner. For the last mile the dwarfs had been forced to stoop, and the prospect of standing straight was abruptly appealing. At least, it was to Morgrim.

‘As ready as I was when you defied your father’s wishes, slipped your retainers and dragged me along on this rat hunt.’

‘See,’ Snorri explained, inching closer to the cavern entrance, ‘that’s what I like about you, Morgrim. Always so enthusiastic.’

Snorri touched a finger to the talisman around his neck, muttered, ‘Grungni…’ and peered around the edge of the tunnel.

Several large rats were gathered in the middle of a vaulted chamber. It might once have been the old entry hall to Karak Krum. Gnawing frantically at something, chattering to one another in high-pitched squeaks and squeals, the creatures seemed oblivious to the presence of the dwarfs.

‘Are they wearing rags?’ Morgrim was so incredulous he shone the lantern closer.

‘Hsst!’ Snorri hissed, scowling at his cousin. ‘Douse the light!’

Too late, Morgrim shuttered the lantern.

One of the rats looked up from its feast, fragments of calcified bone flaking from its maw as it screeched a warning to its brethren.

As one the others turned, snarling and exposing yellowed fangs dripping hungrily with saliva.

Snorri roared, swinging his axe around in a double-handed arc.

‘Grungni!’

The first rat fell decapitated as it lunged for the dwarf, its head bouncing off the slabbed floor and rolling into a corner. At the chamber’s edges it was dark, so dark the dwarfs could not see much farther than the glow of the lantern.

Snorri cut open a second, splitting it from groin to sternum and spilling its foul innards, before Morgrim crushed a third with his hammer. He battered a fourth with a swing of the lantern, the stink of the rat’s burning fur enough to make him gag as it recoiled and died.

‘Two apiece!’ Snorri was grinning wildly, his perfect white teeth like a row of locked shields in his mouth, framed by a blond beard. The heritage of his ancestors was evident in the sapphire blue of his eyes, his regal bearing and confidence. He was prince of the dwarf realm in every way.

Morgrim was less enthused. He was looking into the shadows at the edge of the chamber. It was definitely the old entry hall to Karak Krum. Mildewed wood from thrones and tables littered the floor and a pair of statues venerating the lord and lady of the hold sat in cobwebbed alcoves against the east and west walls, facing one another. Sconces, denuded of their torches, sat beneath the statues, intended to illuminate them and the chamber. They were all that stood out at the periphery of the hall, except for the glinting rubies now floating in the darkness.

Morgrim cast the lantern into the middle of the chamber where it broke apart and flooded the area around it with firelight. Scattered embers and the slew of ignited oil illuminated a truth that Morgrim was aware of even before he had unhitched his shield.

‘More of them, cousin.’ He backed up, casting his gaze around.

Snorri’s bright eyes flashed eagerly. ‘A lot more.’

The dwarfs were surrounded as a score of rats crawled from the darkness, chittering and squeaking. To Morgrim’s ears it could have been laughter. ‘Are they mocking us?’

Snorri brandished his axe in challenge. ‘Not for long, cousin.’

His next blow cleaved a skull in two, the second caving a chest as the rat reared up at him. Snorri killed a third with a thrown dagger before something leapt onto his back and put him on one knee.

‘Gnhhh… Cousin!’

Morgrim finished one off with a hammer blow to the jaw, and broke its back as it fell mewling. He then kicked ash from the sundered lantern in the snout of another, before using his shield to batter the rat that was clawing and biting at Snorri’s back.

Scurrying and scratching rose above the din of blades and bludgeons hitting flesh, the squeals of dying rats.

‘Bloody vermin,’ Snorri raged, throwing another rat off his arm before it could sink its teeth in.

A score had become two score in a matter of minutes.

Morgrim smashed two rats down with his shield, staved in the head of a third with his hammer. ‘There are too many. And big, much bigger than any rat I’ve ever seen.’

‘Nonsense,’ Snorri chided. ‘They are just rats, cousin. Vermin do not rule the underway, we dawi are its kings and masters.’

Despite his bullishness, the prince of Karaz-a-Karak was breathing hard. Sweat lapped his brow, and shone like pearls on his beard.

‘We must go back, get to the tunnel,’ said Morgrim. ‘Fight them one at a time.’ He was making for the cavern entrance from whence the dwarfs had first come, but it was thronged with the creatures. A mass of furry bodies stood between them and the relative safety of the tunnel.

‘We can kill them, Morgrim. They’re only rats.’

But they were not, not really, and Snorri knew it even if he would not admit this to his cousin. Something flashed in the half-light from the slowly fading lantern that looked like a hook or cleaver, possibly a knife. It could not have been armour, nor the studs on a leather jerkin — rats did not wear armour, or carry weapons. But they were hunched, broad shouldered in some instances, and some went on two legs, not four. Did one have a beard?

‘The way back is barred, we must go forwards,’ said Morgrim, the urgency in his tone revealing just how dire he thought the situation to be.

Reluctantly, Snorri nodded.

The two dwarfs were back to back, almost encircled by rats. Eyes like wet rubies flashed hungrily. The stink of wet fur and charnel breath washed over them in a thick fug. Chittering and squeaking wore at the nerves like a blunt blade working to sever a rope.

‘Remember Thurbad’s lessons?’ Snorri asked. A slash to his cheek made him grimace but he cut down the rat who did it. ‘Little bastard, that was a knife!’

Morgrim’s voice suggested he was in no mood for an exam.

‘Which one, cousin? There are many.’ He kept the rats at bay with his shield, thrusting it against the press of furred bodies trying to overwhelm him. His hammer was slick with gore and he had to concentrate to maintain his grip, thankful for the leather-bound haft.

‘Choose your battlefield wisely.’

‘Our current situation would suggest we did not listen very well to that particular lesson, cousin.’

Snorri grunted as he killed another rat. Dwarfs were strong, especially those that descended from the bloodline of kings, but even the prince’s fortitude was waning.

‘We can’t fight a horde like this in the open,’ he said, swiping up a piece of broken wood with his off hand.

Morgrim was trying not to get his face bitten off when he said, ‘And you could not have thought of this before we were surrounded?’

‘Now is hardly time for recriminations, cousin. Do you have any more oil for that lantern?’ he asked, preventing any reply from Morgrim who didn’t bother to hide his exasperation.

‘A flask.’

‘Smash it.’

‘What?’

Each reply was bookended by grunts and squeaks, the swing and thud of metal.

‘Smash it, cousin. There.’ Snorri pointed. ‘Next to the stairway.’

‘What stairway? I can see no-’

‘Are you blind, cousin? There, to your left.’

Morgrim saw it, a set of stone steps leading further into darkness. The prospect was not an inviting one.

Snorri was still pointing with the piece of wood. ‘We can — arrrggh!’

Morgrim dared not turn, but the sound of his cousin’s pain made him desperately want to.

‘Snorri?!’

‘Thagging rat bit off my fingers… Throw the chuffing flask, Morgrim!’

It was risky to stow his hammer, but Morgrim did so to take the flask of oil from his belt and toss it. The heavy flask sloshed as it arced over the bobbing rat heads and smashed behind them in a scattering of oil and clay fragments.

Despite his wounding, Snorri still clutched the piece of wood in his maimed hand and thrust it into the dying embers of the lantern fire the dwarfs had rallied next to. Dried out from the many centuries down in the abandoned hall, it flared quickly, a spattering of spilled oil and the moth-eaten rag still attached to it adding to its flammability.

Snorri didn’t hesitate — his grip was already failing — and hurled the firebrand into the expanding pool of oil. It went up with a loud, incendiary whoosh, throwing back the rats clustered around it. Clutching their eyes, they squealed and recoiled, opening a path to the stairway.

Once he was sure his cousin was behind him, Morgrim was running. He didn’t bother to pull his hammer, and even threw his shield into the furred ranks of the rats to buy some precious time to flee. Snorri outstripped him for pace, his armour lighter and more finely crafted, and he reached the stairway ahead of Morgrim.

‘Down!’ shouted Snorri.

Still running, Morgrim replied, ‘What if the way isn’t clear?’

‘Then we’re both dead. Come on!’

The dwarfs plunged headlong down the stone steps, heedless of the way ahead, the way behind bracketed by flames. As swiftly as it had caught light, the lantern oil burned away and went from a bonfire to a flicker in moments.

The rats were quick to pursue.

Halfway down the stairs, which were broad and long, Snorri pointed with his maimed hand. Even in the semi-darkness, Morgrim could see he had lost one and a half fingers to the rat bite.

‘A door, cousin!’

It was wood, probably wutroth to have endured all the years intact and bereft of worm-rot. Iron-banded, studs in the metal that ran in thick strips down its length, it looked stout. Robust enough to hold back a swarm of giant rats, even rats that wore armour and carried blades.

Snorri slammed against it, grunting again; the door was as formidable as the dwarfs had hoped. Morgrim helped him push it open, on reluctant, grinding hinges.

The rats were but a few paces away when the dwarfs squeezed through the narrow gap they had made and shut the door from the other side.

‘Hold it!’ snapped Snorri, and Morgrim braced the door with his shoulder as the rats crashed against it. He could hear their scratching, the enraged squeals and the squeaks of annoyance that could not have been a language, for rats do not converse with one another. Frantic thudding from the other side of the door made him a little anxious, especially as he couldn’t see Snorri any more.

‘Cousin, if you’ve left me here to brace this door alone, I swear to Grimnir I’ll-’

Carrying a broad wooden brace, Snorri slammed it down onto the iron clasps on either side of the doorway.

‘You’ll what?’ he asked, catching his breath and wiping sweat from his glistening forehead.

Off to seek easier pickings elsewhere, the din from the rats was receding.

Snorri smiled in the face of his cousin’s thunderous expression.

After a few moments, Morgrim smiled too and the pair of them were laughing raucously, huge hearty belly laughs that carried far into the underdeep.

‘Shhh! We will rouse an army of grobi, cousin…’ Morgrim was wiping the tears from his eyes as his composure slowly returned.

‘Then we’ll fight them too! Ha! Aye, you’re probably right.’ Snorri sniggered, the last dregs of merriment leaving him. Wincing, he looked down at his hand and became abruptly sober. ‘Bloody vermin.’

‘I have never seen the like,’ Morgrim confessed. He pulled a kerchief from a pouch upon his belt.

Snorri frowned at it. ‘What’s that for, dabbing your nose when you get a bit of soot on it? Are you turning into an ufdi?’

Morgrim’s already ruddy cheeks reddened further. ‘’Tis a cloth,’ he protested, ‘for cleaning weapons.’

‘Of course it is,’ Snorri muttered as his cousin proceeded to wrap it around his bleeding hand. His smirk became a grimace as Morgrim tied the cloth a little tighter than necessary.

‘For now, it will suffice as a bandage,’ he said. He looked at the dark stain that was already blossoming red all over the kerchief. ‘It’s a savage bite.’

‘Aye,’ Snorri agreed ruefully, ‘I’ve half a mind go back in there and retrieve my fingers from its belly.’

‘Bet you would as well.’ Morgrim was exploring their surroundings, looking for a way onwards and preferably back to a part of the underway they knew. ‘That would be half-minded,’ he mumbled, attention divided. ‘Ha, ha!’ he laughed, turning to face his cousin. ‘Half a mind, to go with half a hand.’

Snorri scowled. ‘Very funny. Haven’t you found a way out of here yet?’

‘There’s a breeze…’ Morgrim sniffed, venturing forwards. Without the lantern, even with the sharp eyes of a dwarf, the darkness was blinding. ‘Coming from somewhere-’

Splintering rock, a loud smack of something heavy hitting stone and then a grunt arrested Morgrim’s reply.

It took Snorri a few moments to realise this was Morgrim and his cousin had fallen into some unseen crevasse.

‘Cousin, are you hurt?’ he called, only for the darkness to echo his words back at him. ‘Where are-’

Hard, unyielding stone rushed up to meet him as Snorri slipped on the same scree that had upended Morgrim. Daggers of hot pain pierced his back as he went down and he cracked his skull before the ground slid from under him and he fell.

Another thud of stone hitting flesh, this time his, like a battering ram against a postern gate. He felt it all the way up his spine and his left shoulder.

Groaning, Snorri rolled onto his right side and saw Morgrim looking back at him with the same grimace.

‘That bloody hurt,’ he said.

Morgrim eased onto his back, looked up at the gaping crevasse above. Dust motes and chunks of grit were spilling down from above like rain.

‘Must have fallen thirty, forty feet.’

He pushed himself up into a sitting position.

‘Feels like a hundred.’ Snorri was on his back, rubbing his swollen head.

‘Nothing to damage there,’ said Morgrim. He tapped the helmet he wore. A pair of horns spiralled from the temples and a studded guard sat snug against the dwarf’s bulbous nose. ‘Should wear one of these.’

‘Makes you bald,’ Snorri replied, prompting a worried look on his cousin’s face. A small stone struck Snorri’s brow and he grimaced again.

‘See,’ said Morgrim, getting to his feet and helping his cousin up. ‘Enough lying down.’ Once Snorri was vertical again, he brushed the dirt off his armour and checked he still had his hammer. ‘We need a way out.’

Without the lantern, it was hard to discern exactly where they had fallen. Doubtless it was one of the lower clan halls of Karak Krum, but there was precious little evidence of that visible in the shadows that clung to the place like fog.

Snorri sucked his teeth.

‘A pity you chucked our lantern oil.’

Morgrim bit his tongue to stop from swearing. Instead he looked around, sniffed at the air. ‘I smell soot,’ he said after a minute or so, then licked his lips. Another short pause. ‘Definitely soot.’

Snorri frowned, and went to recover his axe from where he’d dropped it when he fell. ‘All I can smell and taste is grit.’ He spat out a wad of dirt, hacking up a chunk of phlegm at the same time. ‘And rat,’ he added.

Morgrim’s face darkened. ‘No rat I have ever encountered spoke or carried a blade.’

‘That is because rats can’t do such things.’ Snorri tapped him on the forehead and made a face. ‘Perhaps you need a tougher war helm, cousin.’

Morgrim wasn’t about to be mollified. ‘I know what I saw and heard.’ His face grew stern, serious. ‘So do you. There is more than grobi and urk in these old tunnels. Who can say what beasts have risen in the dark beneath the world?’

Snorri had no answer to that. He hefted his axe and gestured roughly north. Even when lost, if a dwarf is underground his sense of direction is usually infallible.

‘Nose is telling me it’s that way.’

‘What is?’ asked Morgrim, though his cousin was already moving.

‘Something other than this thrice-cursed darkness.’ He paused. ‘And your talking bloody rats,’ he added, before stomping off.

Groaning under his breath, Morgrim followed.