CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 
At the edge of the battlefield, three dwarf lords watched their kin go about their sorrowful work.
‘I could not save them,’ said Ungrim Ironfist. Fire still flickered around him, on his axe and in his eyes, but it could not hide his despair. ‘I marched too far from my gates, filled with thoughts of vengeance. They sprang their trap. Three of their abominations breached the gates. They had within them bombs full of gas…’ His face contorted. He could not understand why anyone would do such a thing. ‘Everyone, everything… It is all gone, gone!’
‘Rest easy, lad,’ said Josef Bugman, who had a particularly disrespectful way with kings. ‘Here, let me get you something for your nerves.’
Bugman beckoned over one of his warriors, a young dwarf already scarred and grim-eyed from many battles. Bugman took a tankard from him and offered it to Ungrim. ‘Fit for a king,’ he said encouragingly.
The Slayer King stared at him, deep in shock. ‘I am not a king any more. I have failed in one oath. Only by fulfilling the other can I make amends.’
All over the battlefield dwarfs worked, retrieving their lamentable number of dead. There were many runic items scattered amid the gore. These were attended to even before the slain, while a large block of troops stood ready, in case the skaven mounted another attack, took them unawares and armed themselves with the treasures of their ancestors. Dusk had fallen. Night came quickly, abetted by the fumes that clogged the sky and kept the sun away.
‘Drink,’ said Bugman encouragingly.
‘No, no, I will not,’ said Ungrim. ‘I cannot rest, I will not rest. My Slayers and I will go to the Empire, to lend what aid we can to the Emperor, if he still lives.’
‘All need light in dark days,’ said Bugman.
‘Grimnir is with me,’ said Ungrim.
‘At least let me give you a few casks of ale for your warriors. They’ll march further and fight harder with a little of my XXXXXX in their bellies.’
Ungrim nodded, and Bugman gave the necessary orders. The last dwarfs of Karak Kadrin, unsmiling though they were, were nevertheless grateful.
Thorgrim and Bugman watched them go into the fast-falling night, Ungrim’s fiery aura making of him a living torch to light the way.
‘A kingly gift, Master Brewer,’ said Thorgrim.
‘I am not a king either, High King,’ said Bugman affably. ‘But I do what I can.’ He sighed. ‘A bad business this. A bad, bad time.’
‘It is a time we cannot recover from,’ said Thorgrim quietly. ‘Look at Ungrim. Karak Kadrin fell three years ago and he behaves as if it were yesterday. If we prevail, shall we all be the same? Broken-minded, fit only to roam the lands of our ancestors?’
‘Steady now, that’s not like you to say so, king.’
‘The Rune of Azamar is broken,’ said Thorgrim.
To them both, the mountain breeze blew a little more chill. Silently, Thorgrim led Bugman round the back of the throne and pointed out the awful truth. There was no light to the rune, and a long, fine crack ran across it from top to bottom.
Bugman tamped down tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and sat down upon a rock. Behind them, dwarfs shouted and chisels clattered as the stonemasons’ guild repaired what damage they could to the walls. Bugman blew out a long plume of smoke. ‘Aye,’ he said at last. ‘I am not surprised.’
‘The Karaz Ankor will fall.’
‘What about Ungrim? The light of Grungni was on him. Surely that’s worth something.’
Thorgrim eased himself down next to the old brewer. ‘It’s not the light of Grungni. Something similar affected me too, filling my armour and weapons with might. Ungrim is possessed by some fire spirit, and I think something rooted in the spirit of metal came to me.’
‘Is it gone now?’
Thorgrim nodded.
‘Well,’ said Bugman, ‘Grungni or not, there’s still good in this world, that’s for sure.’ He gave the king a penetrating stare. ‘Will you drink with me, High King? You’ll not refuse my brew too, will you now?’
Thorgrim was taken aback. ‘A king can refuse many things, Master Brewer, but never a sup from Bugman’s own barrels.’
‘Good for you,’ said Bugman. ‘But I can do better than my own barrel. I reckon you could do with a bit of pepping up. Here, drink from my own tankard. You’ll never taste its like, I promise.’ The dwarf passed over a battered pewter tankard. Once finely worked, it seemed to have taken much hard use and its decorations were worn smooth where they were not tarnished.
The High King took the tankard from Bugman. It brimmed with frothy ale, although the cup had been but moments before hanging empty at the brewer’s belt. The colour was perfect: a deep, golden brown, as pure as a young rinn’s eyes. And its bouquet… Thorgrim lacked the words to describe it. Just smelling the beer made him lightheaded. He immersed himself in the sensation. It brought back memories of happier days, and he forgot all his woes.
Bugman chuckled. ‘Go on then, don’t just stare at it! Drink up, I swear by Grungni’s long beard you’ll feel better for it.’
Thorgrim did as he was told, even though part of him did not want the moment of expectation to pass. He put the pewter to his lips and drank deeply of the ale. Warmed to perfection, it tasted finer than anything he had ever partaken of before, and he’d enjoyed plenty of Bugman’s ales in the past.
As he drank it down, a glow as golden and clean as the colour of the beer seeped into his limbs. There was a brief, vicious stab in his side as the wound seemed to fight back, but it was overwhelmed, and the warmth pushed aside the dirty, itching pain the injury caused him. He drank half the tankard down, of that he was sure, before pulling it away. His gasp of satisfaction turned to one of amazement. The tankard was still full.
‘Take another pull, O king,’ said Bugman.
The king did. When he finished, he patted his side, then prodded it, then poked hard. Nothing.
‘The wound is not healed, I’m afraid,’ said Bugman. ‘It’s too far gone for even my old great-granddad’s tankard to fix with a couple of draughts. But you won’t feel it for a while, and it might just tip it onto the right road to be mended. The curative powers of the mug and my ancestor’s best brew. You’ll not get that anywhere else now but from my own pot. Count yourself privileged.’
Thorgrim, usually so stern, was wide-eyed. ‘It is the greatest honour I have enjoyed in a long time, Master Brewer.’
‘Isn’t it just?’ said Bugman. He looked the king dead in the eye. For all his power and honourable ancestry, Thorgrim felt the battered ranger, born from the dwarf exodus, little better than city-dwelling umgdawi, to be far more than an equal to him. ‘When my old dad’s brewery burned to the ground, and my folk were all killed, I thought it was the end of the world.’ He sighed, a spill of smoke twisting its way from his mouth. ‘And it was the end of one. Another began. I am still here. Don’t scratch out the dawi yet, High King. There’s fight in us all still.’
Bugman hung his magic pint pot, now mysteriously empty again, from his belt. He stood up and offered his hand to the king, like they were two merchants in a bar and not a dispossessed brewer and the lord of all dwarfs. Thorgrim shook it.
‘I’ll be away now.’ He looked into the night, broken only by the dwarfs’ lamps and torches and the light streaming from the high windows of the forts. ‘There are other dwarfs out there as need me.’
‘Still?’ said Thorgrim.
Bugman smiled down at the king. ‘Aye, and there always will be. Whatever happens next, king of kings, don’t ever forget that. We’ve lost a lot, that’s for sure, but there’s no use crying over spilt ale. As long as the mountains are made of stone, there’ll be dwarfs in them, of that I’ve no doubt.’
Bugman lifted up his head, and let out a long trilling whistle. The call of the high mountain chough, not heard for years in those parts. It brought a tear to the king’s eye.
Dark, solid shapes moved from out of the rocks. Thorgrim rubbed his eyes. He felt quite drunk. Bugman, seconds ago alone, was surrounded by his warriors.
‘Look after those of my lads that fell here, king.’
Thorgrim nodded. Bugman winked and vanished into the dark.
Blearily Thorgrim got into his throne. From the vantage it offered, he looked about, but Bugman was nowhere to be seen. He suddenly felt very tired.
‘I shall rest a moment,’ he said. ‘Just a moment.’ He sat down, closed his eyes, and drifted off to the sound of dwarfs hard at work repairing the damage others had done.
Thanquol was nauseous. No matter how he held himself, he felt like he was about to fall over. The walls of the tower – he assumed it was a tower, but who knew if it was or if it was not – did not look right. He felt like he was standing at an angle even when he was quite straight. Wherever Lord Verminking had brought him was not of his world.
‘Now we show you, as promised,’ said the verminlord.
‘What should I see?’ asked Thanquol. He stared into the swirling scrye-orb Verminking produced out of nowhere.
‘Doom, yes-yes. Doom which will lead to your ascension,’ said Skitzlegion.
This did not exactly answer Thanquol. He had no idea how the swirling clouds within the orb amounted to doom, and how was he going to ascend? The grey seer was about to question the verminlord further when the mists of the globe coalesced into faintly glowing images. He was watching a dwarf-thing.
‘The king of all dwarfs!’ he whispered. ‘How do you do-accomplish this? Dwarf scratch-magic makes see-scrying impossible.’
‘Not to us,’ said Verminking, tittering. ‘We know things you shall never know. Concentrate. Think yourself inside his head. You will know all. You will know his thoughts, his heart, his mind. Breath-breath! Yes, yes, that is right. In, we skaven can steal into anything, why not another’s soul? Listen to me, Thanquol, and you learn much, plenty-good magic…’
Thanquol’s vision swam. And then he wasn’t there any more.
Thorgrim Grudgebearer looked up the first curl of the spiral Stair of Remembrance. The walk to the King’s High Porch atop Karaz-a-Karak was always an arduous climb, but right then the stairs were as daunting as a steep mountain slope. He was bone tired. He’d woken a few hours before dawn to find himself exhausted. A clean tiredness, that of the purged, but heavy upon him. He suspected his whole body ached, but could only feel the renewed throb of his wound. Bugman had been right, though. The returned pain was less than it had been before he drank from the fabled tankard. He supposed he should rest more, and he would, but this had to be done first. With his jaw set in determination, the High King began the journey up the spiral stair. Although he longed for sleep, this personal ritual, a way to both commemorate the fallen and ultimately to clear his head, had to be performed.
Despite his victory, his mind was awhirl. Ungrim – grown stranger than ever – had given the High King much to muse over, but that would have to wait. And Bugman, with his never-empty cup and unquenchable hope. Could it be the dwarfs would persist? Now the ale glow was gone, Thorgrim was not so sure, and his oaths to retake their ancient realm seemed laughable.
The stairs demanded his attention, and he turned it upon them. Up and up he wound, each step bringing him pain.
No one but the High King might use these stairs. The lookout at the top and its King’s View was his privilege alone. It was High King Alriksson, Thorgrim’s predecessor, who had shown Thorgrim the way, and even then he had not been permitted to look out, not until Alriksson was dead, and he had made the journey alone.
With each clumping step, Thorgrim remembered one of the slain from the day’s battle. He recalled each dwarf, his name and clan. The journey took hours, yet Thorgrim always ran out of stairs before he ran out of names. The rest of the fallen must await his return trip.
Towards the top, the air grew very thin, and Thorgrim’s lungs laboured hard, aggravating the pain in his side. Dwarf blood was thick, but the air was too sparse here even for them. His progress slowed. The last quarter took longer than the rest. He saved the names of the greatest of warriors for this difficult part of the climb.
At last he reached the top, a high dome carved right inside the very tip of the mountain, adorned with carvings unseen by any other eyes and lit with a king’s ransom of ancient runic glimlights. The sight always awed him slightly, a reminder of the power and glory of the old dwarf kingdom. Coming here was like ascending into the heavens themselves.
Outside, there were no longer any stars. Thorgrim pushed open the rune-heavy door to the porch. The stone slid outwards soundlessly.
Wind whistled around the edges. The air this high was icy and incredibly thin. Thorgrim took deep, panting breaths to stave off dizziness and stepped onto the shallow balcony of the King’s High Porch. Twelve paces across, seven deep, a small balcony, whose balustrade pillars were fashioned in the shape of dwarf warriors. Cut from a natural bay in the mountain, the porch was invisible from below. When shut, the door behind Thorgrim blended seamlessly with the stone. Below him the high snowfields of Karaz-a-Karak plunged downwards. The horizon to the east was a dull silver, the rising sun fighting against the murk. In the few clear patches of the night-gripped sky overhead, only rings of black-green could be seen, the whirling remnants of the cursed Chaos moon.
From the top of the world, Thorgrim looked down upon the lesser peaks. They marched away to every horizon, untroubled by the wars of the creatures who lived among them. Only now in this private spot did the High King begin to open and examine the chambers of his mind. Karaz-a-Karak had resisted, but for how long? And how much stock could he put in the legend of the Rune of Azamar? He wished Ungrim had remained behind – he had never expected Bugman to – but perhaps he could do something to aid the realms of men. In some of the few accounts Thorgrim had received, the Emperor was dead; in others he was alive, but his nation was a ravaged ruin. If he still lived, he would need all the help he could get.
Deep in thought, Thorgrim never saw the black shadow unfold from the rocky peak. Spider-like, it crawled down a cliff face before letting go.
‘Assassin!’ squealed Thanquol in his nowhere place.
‘Hsst!’ warned Verminking. ‘Do not let your excitement alert the king to our presence. We are in his mind!’ Then, more gently, he continued, ‘This is the culmination of many scheme-plans. Deathmaster Snikch delivers the final blow to the dwarf-thing’s empire. It has taken him long-long to work his way to the top of Beard-Thing Mountain-place. No other but he and Lurklox could have achieved it.’
‘The king’s armour…’ began Thanquol doubtfully.
‘He bears new knives, they are warpforged, each triple blessed by the retchings of the Verminlord Lurklox, Master of All Deceptions. They can slice through gromril as easily as incisors sink into a corpse. He will not fail, now hush, and watch!’
In mid-air, the dark shape somersaulted and drew forth its three blades – one in each hand and a third in its tail. With all the momentum of his fall, Snikch drove all three blades into his target.
Thorgrim staggered forwards, great stabs of pain coursing through him. Thanquol gasped, sharing a sliver of his agony. As the king fell to his knees, Thanquol fell to his. Through Thorgrim’s eyes he could see the points of three blades jutting out of his chest, and for a gut-churning second, Thanquol thought it his own.
Thorgrim’s last thoughts were for his people. Like a damned fool beardling he had left the door open behind him. There were so many grudges left unanswered. His last thought crystallised with painful clarity – of course, the hateful cowards had stabbed him in the back.
Thanquol’s consciousness retreated from the dead king, and he observed the scene once again through the scrying-orb.
Tail lashing with excitement, Thanquol watched Snikch saw off the king’s head with his tailblade. The Deathmaster kept watch on the open runic door, his tail performing the grisly deed by its own volition.
‘That head will come to you, little horned one,’ purred Verminking behind him. ‘You must take-show it before the Council of Thirteen, Reclaim the grey seers’ rightful place.’
‘But… but… you told Verminlord Soothgnawer, many praises be upon him, that…’
Verminking chittered, half in amusement, half in exasperation. ‘I had not expected such naivete from you, little seer.’
Thanquol, who had long anticipated himself on the Council of Thirteen, let his mind race with possibilities.
In the orb, the asssassin was scrawling runes upon the stone.
Verminking explained. ‘He is summoning Lurklox. Dwarf scratch-magic prevents skitterleaping, but his scratch-markings will overcome them. Soon an army of gutter runners will be inside Karaz-a-Karak. They will open the gates for our rabble army. Clan Mors has been all but destroyed, but the lesser warlord clans wait in the deep tunnels, and they will be inside before the dwarf-things know. The dwarf realm will be utterly broken!’
‘Then we have won, yes-yes?’ asked Thanquol in surprise. The thought of it seemed… odd.
Verminking shook his head solemnly, his majestic horns swaying. ‘We have won much, but not all. The lizard-things and their lands are dead-gone – but Clan Pestilens is broken. I sense Vermalanx and Throxstraggle’s fury. Although,’ he mused, ‘we must not forget Skrolk, or the Seventh Plaguelord, for he is hidden within the Under-Empire even from my eyes. Clan Skryre has been humbled, but Ikit Claw just survived and will be dangerous. While more goes on in the minds of the Moulders than you know.’
Verminking looked down upon the grey seer, his enormous claw-hand patting Thanquol’s head.
‘And our new allies – the Everchosen, Chaos. They are most powerful of all, yes-yes. We need-must not tell you. Yet we, you and us, we will bide our time. One day it will all be ours.’
Thanquol smiled faithfully up at Verminking. The answer to how to conceal his true thoughts had been simple, when it came to him. As he guarded his words, he must guard his thoughts. All day he had been practising at obscuring his intentions from the verminlord behind a wall of sycophantic loyalty he built across his mind. Once he was certain of the method, he had thought the most treacherous thoughts he could. And Verminking did not hear! All through the battle he had done so without repercussion. He was growing in power.
Shielded by this mental redoubt, Thanquol plotted how he would rid himself of the verminlord for good, and use what he had learned to his greater advantage. He was Thanquol! The most cunning skaven who had ever lived. Lord Skreech Verminking would come to regret forgetting that.
‘Yes-yes, O great one,’ said Thanquol. His eyes narrowed. Soon he would be the master. Soon he would sit upon the Council of Thirteen in the mortal world. But why should he stop there? Unwittingly, the verminlord had opened endless worlds of opportunity to him.
Thanquol’s face betrayed even less than his mind did. ‘Your wishes are my commands,’ he said, and meant not a word of it.