Nick Kyme - The Great Betrayal

‘Strange weather,’ Snorri remarked. Even his own voice sounded distant to him.

‘Aye,’ he heard Drogor answer, in a way that suggested he did not find it strange at all.

Eyeing the horizon behind the elf army, Snorri looked for his cousin as if just the sight of Morgrim would steady his inexplicable nerves. But Morgrim wasn’t there. Snorri was on his own.

The few hundred feet to the middle of the battlefield felt like leagues. Sweat lathered Snorri’s face. It dripped off the end of his nose, and made him want to remove his winged helmet. His heart was racing, faster than it should be, and he had to suppress a tremor in his injured hand as phantom pain he hadn’t experienced in years returned.

‘I call you forth to face grudgement, elfling,’ said Snorri, trying to bolster his fractured resolve. ‘Let it be known on this day that Prince Snorri Lunngrin did meet Caledor of the elgi in honourable combat to settle the misdeeds of his race and exact recompense in blood.’

Caledor was sheathing his sword after making a few practice swings. He had decided on his spear to open with and made a quick thrust before turning to the prince.

‘Were you speaking, little mud-dweller? I didn’t hear you all the way down there, I’m afraid.’ He settled into a ready stance, spear held in one hand. ‘Shall we begin?’

Snorri was incensed, his momentary fear eclipsed by rage, and he roared, ‘Elgi bast-’

The spear lashed out like quicksilver, ripping open a gash down Snorri’s face and splitting his war helm apart. Dazed, the prince half spun then staggered, almost losing his footing. A second blow, a downstroke with the haft, put the dwarf on his back.

The elves cheered, whilst the dwarfs were stunned into silence at the abrupt turn.

Snorri raised his shield, fending off a flurry of jabbing thrusts. The last went straight through, pinning his shoulder before the spear was withdrawn in a welter of his blood.

Crying out, Snorri punched back with the remains of his shield, swinging his axe wildly so he could regain his feet. Laboured breaths that felt like knives sheared from his mouth. His armoured chest heaved and ached. The elf king hadn’t even broken a sweat and stared coldly at his prey.

‘I knew you dwarfs were weak,’ he said. ‘You are diggers and labourers, not warriors. You have erred here, and you will die for it.’

Snorri charged, with a cry of ‘Grungni!’, but found a spear in his thigh arresting his forward momentum. He jerked to a halt, and felt the ground rush up to meet him, smacking into his back like a battering ram and pushing the air from his lungs. Snorri reached for his axe, but it was no longer in his hand, nor was his shield. As the elf king glowered over him, he was defenceless.

‘My father will-’ The words died as Caledor left his spear pinning Snorri to the ground and opened the prince up with his sword.

‘Sapherian steel,’ he told the dwarf, showing Snorri the bloodied blade. ‘Deadly.’

Numbing cold spread through the prince’s body, a deepening chill that would freeze him unto death. He thought of his father, of the destiny that would not be his, of Morgrim and Elmendrin. Until the very end, he fought, spitting blood and mouthing curses at the slowly fading figure of the elf king. It would do no good because Gazul had Snorri now and would take him to his gate.

Snorri Halfhand was dead.

Morgrim barrelled over the rise and saw Snorri fall.

‘No!’ Half rasp, half shout, the thane’s agony echoed across Angaz Baragdum. It incited a riot in the dwarfs, who came forwards to protect the body of their prince. Too late, though, for the elf king had cut Snorri’s arm from the elbow and brandished it like a trophy to his warriors.

Elven riders were already spurring their horses and beginning to charge. They had not yet seen Morgrim’s army.

‘Uzkul!’ he bellowed, consumed by wrathful grief. ‘Crush them!’

Led by Khazagrim, the hearthguard surged forwards to protect the prince. Several were cut down by Caledor before the elf king withdrew on a horse brought by his banner bearer.

Engaged by foes from behind, the knights’ charge failed to materialise and they faltered.

Laughing, and only pausing to cast Snorri’s severed arm into a deep, flooded quarry, the elf king signalled the retreat. In disarray from seeing their prince so savagely struck down, the dwarfs were unable to contain them. Morgrim had abandoned the plan and was forging towards his cousin with all haste, driving through the enemy and hacking down any elf that got in his way. His hammer was crimson by the time he reached Snorri’s side.

A ring of armoured hearthguard parted to let him pass.

Battle din faded in the distance as the last few skirmishes between the fleeing elves and pursuing dwarfs subsided. Morgrim looked down on his cousin’s broken, mutilated body and wept.

Snorri was already ashen. A grimace of defiance etched upon his face, he looked far from at peace. In pursuit of destiny, he had died an ugly, painful death.

‘Dreng tromm…’ uttered Morgrim, sinking to his knees.

‘He would not listen,’ said a voice beyond the hearthguard.

Morgrim looked up and through his tears fixed Drogor with a steely glare.

‘Speak plainly,’ he rasped.

‘I told him to wait.’

‘And is that what you did, Drogor? Did you wait? I saw the throng rooted to the spot whilst my cousin was cut apart. Why did you not aid him?’

‘I was forbidden, and by Grungni’s oath I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It happened so quickly, the elgi king striking our prince down like he was a beardling.’

‘And heaping further ignominy on him by cleaving his arm! Gods, Drogor, he will wander Gazul’s underworld a cripple because of this!’

‘Perhaps with your army to reinforce us…’

Morgrim’s face darkened further. ‘We were delayed. By Valaya, the very elements turned on us.’

‘They can be capricious.’

Morgrim glared but Drogor had already lowered his gaze.

‘It is I that failed the prince, Morgrim, not you. I am sorry.’

Bustling through the throng, Khazagrim returned, preventing further recrimination.

‘The elgi have fled, back to their ships,’ he said. ‘We won’t catch them now.’

Morgrim shook his head in disbelief. ‘And so we suffer further indignity. Gather the throng. We’re going back to Karaz-a-Karak to bring the High King the body of his son.’

Awaken my Wrath

Gotrek’s face was as cold as the marble slab upon which his son was lying.

The tomb was hewn by Everpeak’s finest craftsmen, and the hoard of a lesser king would have been needed to fashion it. Opulent yet austere, it was a monument to dwarf grief and a reminder of a father’s abject failure.

‘It should be me,’ he said to the dark.

Thurbad answered. ‘You could not have known the elgi’s intentions, my king.’

His granite features stained by tears, Gotrek looked up to a shaft of hazy yellow light breaching the ceiling. It peeled back some of the shadows that had settled like a veil upon this sombre place. Statues, great monolithic effigies of the ancestors, were revealed in it. They looked down sternly but benevolently on the High King, who still found it hard to meet their stony gaze. The rest of the vast chamber was lost to echoing darkness, a hollow tomb of broken vows and empty promises.

‘He was to be my heir, Thurbad. I never wanted this for him. I strove to carve out a kingdom that he could rule in peace and prosperity.’

‘Yours has always been a just rule, my king.’

Gotrek sagged. He was only wearing a furred cloak, simple tunic and breeches, but he felt the weight of Snorri’s death like twenty suits of chainmail. Old hands gripped the edge of the marble tomb for support.