01 - Empire in Chaos (23 page)

She heard the threat in his words, but felt suddenly calm. She smiled. For
all his words and his occupation, she felt that there was little guile within
Udo Grunwald.

“I like you, witch hunter,” she said, as surprised by the truth in her words
as he was, judging by the look on his face.

“Why?” he said simply, looking at her as if she were mad.

“I think I know where I stand with you,” she replied. “Which is something.”

The carriage ground to a halt, amid blasts of venting steam and the groan of
metal.

“What’s this?” growled Grunwald, the sudden lack of vibration waking him.

“We are at Karak Kadrin,” said Thorrik dourly.

Grunwald glanced out the slats in the carriage walls—it was still dark out
there and he wondered for a moment if night had fallen—he had completely lost
track of time beneath the ground.

“Is it night?” he said out loud, voicing his thoughts. The dwarf snorted.

“Manlings,” he scoffed. “It nears mid-afternoon. We are still below ground—we travel the last distance to Kadrin Keep by foot—we shall not see the
surface until we leave Kadrin.”

“We?”

“Aye, we. I’ll deliver this,” he said, patting the oil skin wrapped object
that had barely left his side the entire journey, “and then I’ll be on my way
back to rejoin my clan—in the state of Ostermark.”

“What does he keep so well hidden, wrapped in leather?” asked Annaliese
later, as they walked down the metal steps away from the hissing steam engine of
Grimgrandel.

“I’m not sure,” said Grunwald. “Some kind of heirloom, he says. Something
that he is oath-bound to deliver.” He gave the girl a look. Her face was bright,
and she looked rested and curious of the goings on around her. The resilience of
youth, he thought. He felt sore, tired and irritable. “The dwarfs seem to take
their oaths particularly seriously.”

“Maybe it’s some magical relic of old,” said Annaliese, her blue-grey eyes
lighting up, making her look even younger than she was.

“Perhaps,” said the witch hunter noncommittally.

They waited for Karl and his thirty knights, who led their snorting warhorses
from their carriage. The young preceptor smiled broadly at them as he
approached. His steed stood a massive twenty hands tall at the shoulder—a
purebred Averland destrier. Its eyes were wide, and its ears were pulled back—it was a fierce beast, but it clearly did not like the unnatural hissing of the
steam train, nor being underneath the ground.

“Well that was a much shorter, if more uncomfortable, journey than by
horseback. Over five hundred miles! That would have taken weeks—but here it
only took what—three days? Truly a marvel this steam engine. Imagine if these
were constructed all across the Old World! Our troops could be transported from
Altdorf to Kislev within days. Much faster than by ship even.”

“All the coffers of your Emperor would be emptied a thousand times over to
fund such an undertaking,” growled Thorrik, who had turned back to them to hurry
them up. “But come, enough of such foolish talk. We must make haste. There is
grim news—the keep is besieged. Peak Pass is contested.”

Peak Pass was one of only two ways through the towering mountains that formed
the nigh-on impenetrable eastern border of the Empire. Over five hundred miles
to the south lay Black Fire Pass. The only other clear route through the Worlds
Edge Mountains lay almost six hundred miles further north, in the uppermost
reaches of the inhospitable lands of Kislev, the Empire’s northern neighbours.
There lay the High Pass, through which the Chaos forces spilled during the
titanic Great War two hundred and fifty years earlier.

The three passes were the key to the defence of the Empire. Thus was the
message hammered home into would-be military commanders and their subordinates.
The passes meant life or death, and if they fell, so would the Empire.

But if even one of the passes fell to the enemy, then it spelled disaster.
The Empire was almost destroyed during the Great War, and in that time both
Black Fire Pass and the Peak Pass had held strong—through the High Pass the
bloodthirsty hordes of Chaos erupted, overtaking northern Praag and spilling
southwards.

If two passes fell, or Sigmar forbid all three, then there could be no hope
for the Empire of man. Grunwald’s thoughts were dark as he marched along the
cavernous dwarf under-road leading into Kadrin Keep.

It was a marvel of old fashioned dwarf engineering, and Thorrik pointed out
the details of the massive expanse with pride in his voice. The way was lit with
thousands of torches and oil-burning lanterns, and massive arches rose hundreds
of feet above them. The scale of the place was beyond comprehension—indeed the
highest building within any of the great cities of the Empire, even Altdorf,
would be able to sit within the archways with hundreds of feet to spare above
the highest parapet.

Bearded, horn-helmed faces glared down at them, totem-heads that rose as high
as a castle tower. Beneath arched, braided moustaches gaped open mouths broad
enough to allow ten carriages to pass side-by-side. Columns perfectly square,
each side easily a hundred feet in width, rose into the darkness overhead.
Square-cut balconies and platforms were hewn into their sides, betraying the
fact that they were riddled with rooms and stone chambers.

They passed beneath arched bridges, vast passageways that led to other parts
of the hold. Everywhere there were titanic statues and pillars, all intricately
carved with spiralling patterns and weaving lines that formed depictions of
battles, warriors and the dwarf ancestor-gods.

The sheer scale of the place stunned Grunwald, and Annaliese stared with her
mouth wide in astonishment and awe. Thorrik seemed pleased by their reactions.
For nearly a mile they walked along the underway, towards one towering statue
that rose even higher above them than anything else they had seen so far.
Filling the arched expanse, hundreds of feet high and hundreds of feet wide was
a giant carved likeness of a fierce dwarf warrior, his deep eye sockets hidden
in shadow. Stone braids hung down from his face, curling around themselves and
falling to the ground. They hit the ground and extended out before the grand
statue to form high-sided walls that reached hundreds of feet before the statue.
The statue seemed to grow larger as they approached it, rising into the air
above them. Indeed, it seemed as though the arched roof far above was supported
on the shoulders of this mighty king—that he bore the weight of Kadrin Keep
itself.

The statue’s chest and legs were heavily armoured with overlapping plates of
rune-inscribed armour, though his muscular arms were bare except for powerful
bracers that encircled his forearms and coiling dragon-torcs that wrapped around
his massive upper arms. The stone that was carved to form this armour had veins
of gold running through it, so that the statue glittered and shone in the
torchlight. Over his shoulders he wore a cloak of dragon scales and fur.

In one hand the behemoth held a stone helmet. Giant scaled stone wings
extended up from it, merging into the ceiling almost a thousand feet above,
forming pillars and supports. The front of the helmet was carved in the likeness
of a dragon’s roaring visage. The dragon’s wide jaws would frame the warrior’s
face, and there were dozens of sharp teeth carved of pure white stone that
protruded from the monster’s gums. In his other angular, thick-fingered hand the
king held a hammer of giant proportions, engraved with blocky dwarf runes lit up
from within, glowing with orange light. Similar runes blazed upon the warrior’s
helmet, as if the fury of a furnace burnt inside it.

Scores of dwarf warriors bowed their heads and ran their hands over thick
strands of stone hair that formed the giant braids that hit the ground, intoning
oaths and sacred words of greeting or praise. The passageway continued beneath
this mighty statue. Grunwald saw that the dwarfs walking beneath the statue
struck their fists upon their chests, above their hearts, and began chanting as
they walked, a deep throated, mournful drone.

“Behold mighty Grimnir, ancestor-god of courage and mighty deeds,” spoke
Thorrik, his voice solemn and reverential. “Karak Kadrin guards the Shrine of
Grimnir. It is a place of great reverence, and thousands of dawi-kind travel
from their holds to pay homage to the ancestor-god here every year.”

“How do those runes glow with light?” asked Annaliese, her voice full of
wonder. “Is it magic?”

“Magic? Pfah!” snorted Thorrik. “The dawi—dwarfs as you know us—have no
use for magic in the way you mean. No, it is something more mundane, yet no less
impressive for that. The most skilled stonemasons of Karak Kadrin carved them
but the stone of those runes of courage, kingship and battle is as thin as
parchment. There is fire behind them that will never grow dim until the dawi are
no more, and it is the light of those flames that you see through the
stone.”

Annaliese raised her eyebrows, clearly impressed. “Stone as thin as
parchment… Surely it would shatter?”

Thorrik chuckled. “Aye lass, if carved by any but dwarf hands, it would. None
in all the world can match a dwarf in craftsmanship.”

“I can believe that looking upon this,” said Annaliese softly.

“For such short folk, you certainly build tall,” said Karl “Almost as if you
were making up for your lack of height.”

Grunwald smirked involuntarily but was
amazed at the knight’s lack of tact for daring to say such a thing, however apt,
in the presence of Thorrik and his kinsmen, before such an awe-inspiring statue
of one of their great gods. It was clear that the knight had little experience
of dwarfs.

Thorrik rounded on the knight glowering with rage. Karl was forced to halt,
and the giant steed he led snorted and stamped its hooves. Though the preceptor
towered over the dwarf who came barely to his chest, Annaliese and Grunwald
breathed in a little and backed off a step from the simmering rage that
threatened to overwhelm the warrior.

“Utter such a remark again, beardling, and as Grimnir is my witness I swear
that I will cut the legs from under you so that you will look at the world from
the same height as I,” growled the ironbreaker, his hand closing on the haft of
his axe threateningly.

Several of Karl’s knights frowned and their hands reached for their own
swords, but Karl raised his hand to stop them. His eyes still glimmered with
humour, but his face was serious.

“I apologise—to you and your gods—brave warrior. I mean no disrespect.
This place is… beyond words, and I fear my mouth ran away with me. My deepest
apologies, once more, Thorrik Lokrison,” he said earnestly.

Thorrik grunted, pleased by the human’s words but his face still burning with
rage. He cleared his throat. “Kadrin is not a place for what might pass amongst
you humans as humour. I warn you now, once. So much as
think
such a
disrespectful thought, and the Slayer King will have you gutted and left upon
the mountainside for the crows to pick at. Kadrin is not the place for levity,
and you had best remember that.”

With a final glare, Thorrik swung back around
and continued to lead them down the broad passageway. Grunwald shook his head
incredulously at Karl as he caught the knight’s eye, and the preceptor gave him
a quick shrug of the shoulders, a look of mock grievance upon his face. “You are
an idiot,” Grunwald said softly, before turning to follow Thorrik.

“I didn’t know he would be quite so touchy,” said Karl to himself.

Annaliese shook her head slightly, her eyebrows raised in reproach, though
there was a hint of a smile on her lips. She patted Karl on his armoured
shoulder as she passed.

The knight watched the girl walk away from him, her short-cropped blonde hair
seeming to glow with a light of its own. He had at first been disappointed when
he had seen that she had cut her flowing, wavy hair, but he had to admit that
her shorter style was growing on him—it showed her face better, and made her
seem a little older. His eyes lingered on her slight figure, the sway of her
hips beneath her robe and chainmail that fell almost to the ground.

He whistled softly through his teeth, and shook his head at himself. Then he
led his thirty Knights of the Blazing Sun on, passing beneath the statue of
Grimnir and into the mighty, besieged, Kadrin Keep.

For five days they had been stuck inside the keep as the enemy attacked it
night and day, and Grunwald’s patience was frayed to the point of breaking.

“We should never have come by the damn steam engine,” Karl snarled. “By now I
could have been more than half way to the Ostermark. But here we are trapped
like mice inside this accursed dwarf fortress, with no chance of breaking out.”

“I thought you liked the journey,” remarked Grunwald.

Karl glowered at him. “I am ordered to bolster the ranks of my order in
Bechafen. They are dying out there fighting against the damn forces of Chaos,
and here we are locked inside a castle in foreign lands.”

“Yes, I know, Karl! You haven’t let any of us forget it in the last three
days.”

“I am sick of the sight of you, witch hunter. But there isn’t really any way
that I can avoid it.”

Grunwald rose to his feet, his face dark. Karl remained seated, his face
bitter and resentful.

“What are you doing here anyway, Grunwald?” snapped Karl. “Following the girl
around like some lovesick fool? Giving her Sigmar’s guidance, my arse. Not
really a job befitting a witch hunter, is it? She’s hardly some evil sorceress.
What is it? You want to rut with the girl or something?”

Grunwald’s fist cracked against Karl’s cheek, throwing him backwards off the
barrel he was sat on. He scrambled to his feet, his face angry.

“What, is that it? Hit a nerve, did I?” he spat. “You are old enough to be
her father, and ugly enough to scare off a dwarf maiden. You think she would
ever dream of bedding one such as you?”