Nick Kyme - The Great Betrayal

On the north wall the fighting had grown fiercer. Elf and dwarf lay dead and dying upon the battlements, gutted and staved in, broken and cleaved. Two great civilisations were destroying one another, yet no one cared to notice.

Morgrim’s hammer felt heavy as he bludgeoned but not from the heft of the weapon, he could wield it all day and night if needed. It was the blood upon it, the slaughter that weighed the dwarf down.

A screech that resonated across the sky, tearing it open, shook Morgrim from his reverie. An upper tower had collapsed and something leathern and terrible had shot out from it like a battering ram.

‘Drakk!’

His warriors cried out and balked when they saw the dragon smash through the tower roof. Pieces of stone, shattered chips of tile cascaded onto them but were a paltry shower compared to the deluge that slammed down into the elves amassing in the courtyard. Fixed on the beast, the dwarfs barely paid any heed. One abandoned all thoughts of defence altogether and found a spear in his gut for his trouble. Another jumped off the battlements, mind crushed by fear. Dwarfs were a hardy race, and their history with dragons was long and bloody, but such primordial beasts were terrifying even for the sons of Grungni.

Morgrim marshalled his courage, still fighting hard with an eye on the sky as the beast wheeled above. ‘Hold fast!’ he yelled at the clanners. ‘Stone and steel!’

Gritting their teeth, the rest of the dwarfs gripped their axe hafts and fought on.

Through maddened slashes of the battle, Morgrim saw the dragon savage the war engines before turning its wrath onto the High King. His heart quickened for a moment when his liege-lord was engulfed by flame but then returned to normal when he saw the High King was unscathed.

Soaring skywards, the beast pulled out of bow range before coming down hard on the tunnellers. Dragon fire stitched across their ranks, igniting the pots of zonzharr and pushing a ferocious inferno down Grik’s gullet. Morgrim was forced away before he could see more, but the image of burning dwarfs staggering from the tunnel mouth was etched into his mind.

With the wrenching of stone Grik collapsed, releasing a pall of dust and trapping the survivors inside with the fire.

Below the western gatehouse, Nadri toiled at the face of Ari. Strong elven foundations were making the last few feet hard, but it meant they were close. Hacking with their picks and shovels, the miners had carved out a subterranean cavern that was wide enough to admit a small army. With over four hundred ironbreakers waiting silently in the wings, it needed to be.

They were led by one of the Everpeak thanes, a foreign-looking dwarf whom Nadri had seen with the prince on several occasions and so assumed was part of his inner circle. Unlike the ironbreakers, his armour was light and of a strange design, depicting effigies of creatures Nadri wasn’t familiar with. The thane seemed to be waiting for something, as though he knew they were about to breach.

A lodewarden called the sappers back. The time for digging was over, fire would do the rest. Lighting the zonzharr, the miners at the end of the tunnel retreated and took shelter behind barriers of wutroth. With a grunt, three dwarfs from the Copperfist clan rolled the great clay urn of the zonzharr down the tunnel. When it smashed against the end it immolated the base of the gatehouse wall in a flare of angry crimson fire. A cheer went up as the foundation rock broke apart, dumping earth and flagstones into the gap the miners had hewn with their pickaxes.

‘Khazuk!’ The chant resonated through the ironbreakers’ closed helms as they rushed through the breach, led by the thane.

Nadri and the other sappers stood aside to let the cavalcade of armoured bodies through.

Jorgin Blackfinger, lodewarden of Barak Varr, climbed onto a boulder so he could be seen and heard by all the clans.

‘Ready for another tough chuffing slog, lads?’

Nadri bellowed with his fellow clanners. ‘Ho-hai!’

Nearly two hundred miners followed behind the ironbreakers, brandishing picks and shovels. The light streaming through the breach was hazy, thick with grey dust, but the clash of blades was clear enough.

The elves had lost their gatehouse, a part of it at least, but their warriors were ready and willing to defend the breach. And above the carnage of the battle, a sound, deep and resonant… A primordial roar.

Snorri heard the dragon rather than saw it. Enclosed beneath the mantle of the battering ram, it was hard to see much of anything other than the back of the dwarf in front and the shoulder of the one to your side.

Words spoken what seemed like an age ago returned to the young prince, plucking at his pride.

Dawi barazen ek dreng drakk, un riknu.

A dragon slayer, one destined to become king.

Snorri felt the pull of destiny. It was slipping through his grasp.

He tried to turn, find the beast through the slit of vision afforded to him beneath the mantle, but it was impossible. The ram was moving under its own momentum, him with it. Apparently, fate was too. All he caught was snatches of sky, of armoured dwarfs embattled.

The beast cried out again, a rush of flame spat from its maw easy to discern even above the din of the assault. Burning flesh resolved on the breeze.

Trapped in the throng, battering at the east gate, Snorri railed.

But there was nothing he could do.

And then, like a magma flow breaching through the crust, the gate cracked apart and the dwarfs flooded forwards. Snorri went with them, hurled along by furious momentum. Behind him, he heard the shouts of other warriors joining the fray.

The goad was obvious. Liandra saw it as clearly as the lance in her armoured grip. She imagined ramming it through the old dwarf king’s heart, the one who lorded over the others on his throne of dirty gold. She would make him suffer, but would have to do it soon. Fires caused by the mud-dwellers’ crude magic lit Tor Alessi like lanterns honouring some perverse celebration. For all that she burned, the dwarfs could visit it upon the elves threefold. She needed to redress the balance and was about to rein Vranesh into a sharp dive when the west gatehouse collapsed.

Like armoured ants, dwarfs scurried from below and attacked her kinsmen. She watched an entire cohort of spearmen, injured and confused from the destruction, wiped out by the mud-dwellers in seconds. More were coming, spilling up from the earth like a contagion, a spouting geyser of filth running amok across Tor Alessi’s west quarter.

Liandra hesitated, torn by indecision. She wanted the dwarf king, to gut him like a wild boar on her spear. But the defenders at the west gatehouse were failing. They needed time to restore order, something to regain some momentum.

Spitting a curse, Liandra turned away from the king and went to the aid of her dying kin.

After a welter of colourful swearing, Gotrek gave up on the dragon rider and ordered the host of Everpeak to march. Reacting to the gatehouse collapse, elven reserves stationed behind the city walls were swarming to the west quarter to try and staunch the dwarf incursion. Gotrek gave them just long enough to become entangled in the fight there before he nodded to his horn bearers to herald a second assault.

The east gate was breached, but the throng there led by Snorri hadn’t penetrated far. That was about to change. As the deep, ululating clarion call boomed out dwarf forces hiding amongst the rocks came forth, led by Furgil. The pathfinder had done well to conceal an entire host. Combined with Snorri’s clans and the throng of the High King, it was an army large enough to overrun the entire eastern wall let alone its gate.

Gotrek despaired at the thought of it. They had gone from peace… to this .