CHAPTER THREE 
Skarsnik, the King under the Mountains, looked out over the greenskin shanty town filling the dwarf surface city. In ruined streets, between ramshackle huts of wood and hide, raucous orcs drank and fought one another. Goblins squealed and tittered. On the slopes of scree studded with broken statuary, snotlings gambolled, throwing stones at passing greenskins, oblivious to the cold that turned their noses pink.
Autumn was halfway through, and the first flakes of the year’s snow already drifted on the wind.
Skarsnik shivered and pulled his wolf pelt closer about him. He was old now – how old he wasn’t quite sure, for goblins took less care in reckoning the years than men or dwarfs did. But he felt age as surely as he felt the grip of Gork and Mork on his destiny. He felt it in his bandy legs, in his creaking knees and hips. His skin was gnarled and scabbed, thick as tree bark, and he leaned more often on his famous prodder for support than he would have liked. His giant cave squig, Gobbla, snuffled about around his feet, equally aged. Patches of his skin had turned a pinkish-grey, for he was almost as old as his master.
Skarsnik wondered how long he had left. It was ironic, he thought, that after years of wondering whether it would be a skaven blade or dwarf axe that finished him, it would be neither. Time was the enemy no one could fight.
In truth, no one knew how old a goblin could get because they did not usually last that long. Most of them would not even consider dying of old age. Skarsnik considered lots of unusual things because Skarsnik was no ordinary goblin, and what went on in his head would have been entirely alien to other greenskins. Lately, old age had occupied Skarsnik’s thoughts a lot.
‘Must be fifty winters and more I seen. Fifty!’ he cackled. ‘And here’s another come on again. Still, stunty, I reckon I got another few to come.’ Skarsnik was all alone on the balcony, save for a couple of mangy skaven skins and several dwarf heads in various states of decay, spiked along the broken balustrade. It was to his favourite, its eyes long ago pecked out, skin desiccated black in the dry mountain air, nose rotted away, that he addressed his words. A sorry-looking head, but even in death it had a magnificent beard. Skarsnik liked to stroke it when no one was looking. ‘Duffskul’s still knocking about, and he’s well older than me.’
He grumbled and spat, muttering thoughts that not one of his underlings would understand, and drew his long chin into his stinking furs.
‘What a bleeding mess, eh, stunty? Them zogging ratties done driven me out of me stunty-house. I am not happy about that, no, not one little bitty bit.’
He looked forlornly at the ruinous gatehouse marking the grand entry to the Hall of a Thousand Pillars, heart of the first of Karak Eight Peaks’s many deeps. ‘Once upon a time, stunty, that was mine. And everything under it. Not any more. On the other side of the great doors I won one of me greatest victories, and the stunty-house was me kingdom for dozens of levels down. Think about that, eh? Kept hold of it longer than your lot did, I reckon!’ His laugh turned into a hacking cough. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His next words came out all raspy. ‘Gobboes, beat them all and sorted them out. Ratties. Beat them, and then I beat them, and then I blew them up, drowned them and beat ’em some more. Stunties came back. Beat them too,’ said Skarsnik wistfully, looking across at the citadel that dominated the heart of the city. ‘Look at that will you, stunty! That’s all your king’s got. Nuffink. I’m the king around here. I am. Right?’
He paused. The dwarf’s beard stirred in the wind. Fat, wet flakes of snow splatted against its taut skin. It was coming down thicker, and the temperature was dropping.
‘Well, I’m glad you agree.’
Not that that changed anything. Skarsnik was still dispossessed, and he was not happy about it. He watched another tribe of greenskins straggling into orctown from the west gate. His eyes narrowed, calculating. They were weedy little ’uns, worn by hard travels. Within seconds of coming into the gate they were rapidly set upon by orcs and bigger goblins, who stole everything they had, leaving them naked and shivering in the cold. ‘Always more where they came from,’ whispered Skarsnik. ‘Always more.’
‘Ahem!’ A high-pitched cough demanded Skarsnik’s attention. Behind him, standing ramrod straight, was his herald, pointy hood standing as diligently to attention as its owner.
‘What you want, Grazbok?’ said Skarsnik, squinting at the small goblin. The sky was overcast, brilliant grey with pending snow, and the glare of it hurt his eyes. ‘You keep sneaking up on me like that, I’ll have to send you out scouting for ratties. And you,’ he said, kicking Gobbla in the side with a leathery thwap, ‘are losing your touch.’
Gobbla snuffled and waddled off, the chain connecting him to Skarsnik’s leg rattling as he licked scraps of dried dwarf flesh from the floor. Grazbok gave Skarsnik a sidelong look that suggested he was going to make more noise next time.
‘Your highnessness,’ the herald squeaked, ‘I have da great Griff Kruggler here to sees ya!’
Skarsnik’s lips split in a wide grin, yellow as the moon talismans dangling from his pointy hat. ‘Kruggs, eh? Send him up! Send him up!’
Kruggler was a long time coming up the steps from the halls under the Howlpeak. A pained wheezing came first, followed by the click of unsteady claws on stone.
Skarsnik’s eyes widened as Kruggler came out into the pale day upon the back of a staggering wolf. He had become fat. Enormously, disgustingly fat. His wolf mount gasped under him as it heaved itself up onto the balcony. Kruggler swung his leg over its back – with some difficulty – and slid to the flagstones. The wolf let out a huff of relief, dragged itself off into a corner and collapsed.
‘Been a long time, boss,’ said Kruggler.
Skarsnik took in the rolls of flab, the massive hat and the greasy gold trinkets festooning his underling.
‘What the zog happened to you?’
Kruggler was abashed. ‘Well, you know, living’s been good…’
‘You is almost as fat as that… what was he called? That boss. That one I killed of yours?’
‘Makiki, the Great Grizzler-Griff.’
‘Yeah! Only thing great about him was his size.’ Skarsnik laughed at his own joke. Kruggler just looked puzzled. Skarsnik scowled at his confusion. Trouble was, Skarsnik was a lot brighter than every other greenskin he’d ever met. It was depressing. ‘Gah, suit yerself. How you been?’
Kruggler pulled a face. ‘Not good, boss, to tell da truth.’
‘And there you was saying living was good.’
Kruggler looked confused. ‘Well, I did, er – well, it was, boss, it was. But things… well, they is not no good no more.’
‘What do you mean? Look at all these greenies come to join the Waaagh! Good times, Kruggs, good times. Soon there’ll be enough to kick the ratties out and take back the upper halls!’
Kruggs gave him a puzzled look.
‘Stop looking so zogging thick, Kruggs! Did I make an idiot king of all the Badlands wolf tribes?’
‘Well, er, no, boss, but…’
‘Go on, go on, spit it out!’
‘Well, I said things is no good,’ said Kruggler anguishedly. ‘I mean it! Dead things everywhere, fighting each other. Dwarfs on the march, fire mountains spitting fire and such. And the ratties, boss. The ratties is all over the place! I ain’t see so many, not ever. They’s taking over the stunty-houses, all of ’em, and not just a few. They’s slaughtering the tribes wherever they find ’em. Something big’s happening, something–’
Skarsnik was nose to nose with Kruggler before the plains goblin realised he’d moved. Skarsnik’s sour breath washed over his face.
‘Careful there, Kruggs. Don’t want you starting to bang on about the end of the world. Had a bit too much of that kind of talk lately from a few too many of the lads. Everything’s going on as normal here. We fight the rats, the rats fight the stunties, the stunties fight us, got it?’
Kruggler made a funny noise in his throat. ‘Got it, boss.’
‘Good.’ Skarsnik turned away from his vassal. ‘So what’s you saying then, Kruggs? You think they’s going to come here too? Better not, because they’ll have old Skarsnik to deal with and I–’ He coughed mightily. The fit held him for a minute, his hunchback shoulders shaking with it. Kruggler looked around, his tiny goblin mind torn between helping his boss, stabbing him, and wondering if there was anyone that could see him do either. Paralysed by indecision, he just stood and watched.
Skarsnik hawked up a gob of stringy phlegm and spat it onto a skaven hide rotting on a frame. ‘Because if they do, they’ll have me to deal with, and I ain’t no bleeding stunty! Anyways, look at all them. They’s come here to help me. They hears I’m the baddest and the bestest. Old Belegar and his mates up there in his stupid tower might have done for old Rotgut, but he can’t get me, can he? No zogging ratty or stunty is kicking me out of these mountains, you hear? You hear!’
He shouted loudly, his nasal voice echoing from the ruins of the dwarf surface city. Orcs and goblins looked up at him. Some cheered, some jeered. Some wandered off, uncaring.
‘See, with this lot coming to join da Waaagh! I’ll kick them ratties out and take it all back for good.’
Skarsnik had, of course, said this many, many times before. But it never happened. The balance of power between the greenskins and skaven swung backwards and forwards viciously; sometimes the goblins had the upper hand, sometimes the skaven – sometimes the stunties stuck their beards in for good measure. So it had been for time immemorial. But lately that had been changing. Skarsnik would never have admitted it to anyone but Gobbla, but each time he was victorious, he was able to hold less of the city, and for shorter periods of time.
‘But, boss! Boss!’ said a dismayed Kruggler. Cowardice nearly made him stop, but his loyalty to Skarsnik ran deep. He was one of the few who could tell the warlord what he didn’t want to hear. At least that’s how it’d been in the old days, and he really hoped it was that way still because he couldn’t stop himself. He plunged on, gabbling faster as his panic built. ‘They’re not here to help you, boss. They ain’t here for no Waaagh! That’s what I’m trying to tell you, boss.’
Skarsnik’s prodder swung round and was pointed at Kruggler’s face. Green light glinted along its three prongs. His expression became vicious. ‘There you go again! What do you mean? End of the world is it, Kruggs, because if you keeps it up, it will be for you.’
Kruggler held his hands up. He leaned back from the prodder so far his boss helmet slipped from his head to clang on the floor. ‘I means, boss, they is coming here because they knows you is here and you is da best.’
‘Exactly, exactly!’ said Skarsnik. He put the prodder up and nodded with satisfaction.
‘Yeah, boss. Yeah,’ said Kruggler with relief. ‘You is the cleverest. I knew you’d be clever and see.’ He came to stand next to Skarsnik and looked out. He smiled idiotically. ‘They isn’t coming here to fight. They think you can protect them! They is running away.’
Kruggler realised what he had said and clapped his hands over his mouth, but the fight had gone out of Skarsnik. He was staring out into the thickening snow at something Kruggler could not see.
‘We’ll see about that, we’ll see,’ he said sullenly.
A couple of miles away over the orc-infested ruins, King Belegar, the other king of Karak Eight Peaks, looked out into the gathering storm, engaged in his own contemplation. Abandon the hold indeed. Thorgrim’s request dogged his thoughts still. But now, six months later, a small part of him feared that the High King might have been right…
Like Skarsnik, Belegar was troubled by what he saw. Something dreadful was afoot.
He pounded his mailed fist on the rampart of the citadel, causing his sentries to turn to look at him. He huffed into his beard, shaking his head at their concerns, although he was secretly pleased at their vigilance.
‘Something dreadful is afoot,’ he said to his companion, his first cousin once removed and banner bearer, Thane Notrigar.
‘How do you know, my liege?’
‘You can stop it with that “my liege” business, Notrigar. You’re my cousin’s son and an Angrund. Even if you weren’t, we’ve fought back to back more times than I care to recall. Besides,’ he added gloomily, ‘a dawi has to be a real king to get the full “my liege” treatment.’
‘But you are a real king, my liege!’ said Notrigar, taken aback.
‘Am I?’ said Belegar. He gestured into the snowstorm, now so thick it had whited out everything further away than one hundred paces from the citadel walls. ‘King Lunn was the last real king of this place. History will remember that it was he, not I.’
‘There will be many more after you, my liege,’ said Notrigar. ‘A long and glorious line! Thorgrim is a grand lad. He is coming into his own with every day. You could not wish for a finer son, and he’ll be a fine king, when the time comes.’
Belegar was mollified for a moment. ‘A fine king, but one of rubble and ruination. And he needs to wed, and sire his own heir. Who will have him, the beggar king of Eight Peaks?’
‘But my liege! You are a hero to every dawi lass and lad. Send him back to Everpeak and there you shall have dawi rinn of every clan begging for his hand.’
‘What did I say to you? Belegar will do, lad. Or cousin, if you must.’
Notrigar, although now many years in the Eight Peaks, did not feel he knew his cousin well at all, raised as he had been in distant Karaz-a-Karak. Belegar was a legend to him, a hero. He could not countenance calling him by his name, cousin or not. He settled on ‘my lord’.
‘Yes, my lord,’ he said.
Belegar rolled his eyes. ‘Beardlings today,’ he said, although Notrigar was well past his majority and a thane in his own right. ‘All right, all right, “my lord” if it makes you feel better.’
‘Thank you, my lord.’
‘Don’t mention it. What you said, just then. That’s the problem, isn’t it? He’d have to go back. He’d have to risk the journey. It took me nigh on four months to get to Karaz-a-Karak for the kingsmeet and back, and that in the summer. Things are worse now, mark my words. What if he’s taken by grobi or urk? What if the thaggoraki steal him away. Then that’ll be that, won’t it? What we’ve all fought so hard for gone. A kingdom of ruins with no king. Fifty years! Fifty years! Gah!’ He punched the stone again. His Iron Hammers had more sense and honour than to mutter, but they exchanged dark looks. ‘When Lunn was king, this was still the finest city in all of the Karaz Ankor. What is it now, Notrigar? Ruins. Ruins swarming with grobi and thaggoraki, with more coming every day.’
‘But you have been here for fifty years, my lord. You are successful.’ Notrigar had never dreamed to see his lord and kin in such poor temper, or to confide in him in such an open and upsetting manner. He did not know quite what to say. Reassurance did not come naturally to a dwarf.
‘Right. Here I am in my glorious castle,’ Belegar said sarcastically. ‘I came here hoping to take it all back. I came hoping to look upon the far deeps, on the ancestor statues of the Abyss of Iron’s Dream. I dreamed of opening up the Ungdrin again, so that armies might freely march between my, Kazador’s and Thorgrim’s realms. I dreamed of reopening the mines, of filling the coffers of our clan with gold and jewels.’
They both became a little misty-eyed at this image.
‘But no. A few weapons hordes, a few treasure rooms and a lot of failure. We can’t even keep our master brewer safe,’ he said, referring to one of the more recent entries in Karak Eight Peaks’s Book of Grudges. ‘Six months since the damn furskins took Yorrik and I’ve not had a decent pint since.’
‘We have the will and the resolve, my–’
‘You’ve not read the reports, have you?’ said Belegar. ‘Not seen what the rangers are saying, or what those new-fangled machines of Brakki Barakarson are saying.’
‘The seismic indicators, my lord?’
‘Aye, that’s them. Scratchy needles. Thought it was all a lot of modern rubbish, to tell you the truth. But he’s been right more than he’s been wrong. There’s a lot going on underground, down in the lower deeps. Never did get very far on the way to the bottom. Grungni alone knows how many tunnels the thaggoraki have chiselled out down there. Gyrocopters coming in, telling me every inch of Mad Dog Pass is crawling with ogres, grobi and urk. No message from half the holds in months, no safe road out, and no safe road in. I’ll bet that little green kruti Skarsnik is out there right now too, standing on the parapets of Karag Zilfin looking over at us as we look over at him. It’s been that way for far too long. If it only weren’t for that little bloody…’ He trailed off into a guttural collection of strong dwarfish oaths. ‘One enemy,’ he said, holding up a finger. ‘I think I could have handled one. If it weren’t for him I’d have driven the grobi off years ago and cleared the skaven out of the top deeps. Trust me to get saddled with the sneakiest little green bozdok who ever walked the earth.’ He sighed, pursing his lips so that his beard and moustaches bristled. ‘And now it’s all gone quiet. Too bloody quiet. I’ll tell you what this silence is, Notrigar.’
‘What is it, my lord?’ said Notrigar, for Belegar was waiting to be prompted.
‘It’s the beginning of the end, that’s what it is. Or so those thaggoraki probably think.’
Notrigar looked around for help. The ironbreakers, hammerers and thunderers manning the ramparts were staring studiously off into the middle distance. He raised a hand, started to speak, then thought better of it. To Notrigar’s dismay, the king began to hiccup, his chest heaving.
‘My lord?’ said Notrigar. Oh Grungni, thought the thane, please don’t let him be… crying? Belegar’s shoulders heaved, and he turned away. Notrigar reached an uncertain hand out for his kinsman.
He leapt back as Belegar burst out laughing, a sound as sudden and surprising as an avalanche, and to the unnerved Notrigar, just as terrifying. The king’s mirth rolled out from the ramparts, wildly bellicose, as if it could retake Vala-Azrilungol all on its own.
‘That’s right, you green bozdoks! King Belegar is laughing at you, and you, you vicious thaggoraki! I am laughing at you too!’ he bellowed. His shout was blunted by the snow, the lack of echo unsettling to Notrigar, but Belegar did not care. The king wiped a tear of mirth from his eye, flicking it and a finger’s worth of snow crystals away from his moustache. He clapped his arm around his cousin, his face creased with a grim smile. ‘Oh don’t look so glum, lad. I’ve always been a sucker for a lost cause, me. We’ll show them, eh? We can hold out. We always have, keeping our heads down until more reinforcements come and the bloody fun can start all over again. They’ll never get through the fortifications we’re planning, no matter how many of the little furry grunkati come – there’ll be a trap for each and every one of them, eh, lad? Don’t worry, I haven’t gone zaki. You see, lad, you have to know what you’re fighting, and be certain you’re not underestimating it before you can crush it. Once you know what’s what, nothing is impossible, and you can shout your cries of victory right in the face of your enemy. Furry or green, or in our case both, it doesn’t matter, lad. This is the Eternal Realm. We’ll never fall.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ The other dwarfs were chuckling at their king’s good humour, laughing at Notrigar for not seeing the joke. Belegar’s arm was like a stone lintel on his shoulders. Notrigar had a sudden urge for an ale. A strong one.
‘That’s right!’ Belegar bawled, making Notrigar’s ears ring. ‘I’ll be ready for you, Skarsnik! Send everything you’ve got. It will never, ever be enough. Cheer up, Notrigar. Why,’ said Belegar, ‘I’m just beginning to enjoy meself.’