battle, the elgi had pushed out of their citadel, emerging in strength from the breaches his own war engines had carved into the outer walls. Their infantry were formidable enough – well-organised squares of mail-clad spearmen supported by cavalry squadrons that moved steadily across the ceded ground. On their own such soldiers would have been a worthy test.

But the dragons… they were something else. Morgrim stayed where he was, saying nothing, in silent awe of their supremacy, their matchless arrogance, their contempt.

Some madness had taken hold of them. They crashed to earth in flailing whirls of claws and tails, crushing everything beneath them, before launching back into the skies with broken bodies trailing in their wake. They smashed siege engines apart. They belched gobbets of coruscation that melted all but the gromril masks of his best equipped elite. Bolts fell harmlessly from their armour. No axe or blade seemed to bite. Those that stood up to them died and, since no dwarf ever ran from danger, that meant whole regiments were wiped out with horrifying speed.

As the sun finally met the western horizon, casting crimson rays across the fields of death and sending long barred shadows streaking out from the base of the towers, the dragons still glittered like jewelled spears, their scales flashing vividly like the coloured glass in the shrine of Grungni.

He remembered Imladrik telling him of the Star Dragons. Morgrim had scoffed at the description.

‘We know how to kill drakk,’ he had said.

Imladrik had laughed. Back then, they had often laughed together. ‘Even daemons struggle to live against a Star Dragon,’ he had replied. ‘On this occasion, my friend, you do not know of what you speak.’

I did not. Truly, I did not.

The runesmiths were struggling as they attempted to drag up rune-wards that would do something to halt the dragons’ rampage, the elgi mages in the city were freed up to send their own magics whirling and bursting into the shattered dawi formations. Everything had been overhauled, turning with agonising swiftness from the long grind of a city siege into the sudden slaughter of a rout.

‘We cannot fight this,’ said Morgrim quietly. With every second that passed more of his host was being hammered into the ground. He could smell the blood on the air, thick as woodsmoke.

‘There must be a way,’ Morek insisted, still breathing heavily from whatever summoning he had been attempting. His staff looked as if it had been retrieved from a magma-pit; even Morgrim could see that the power had been burned away from it.

‘There will be a way,’ agreed Morgrim. ‘But not this day.’

Morek looked at him doubtfully. ‘The thanes will not retreat.’

‘They will, because I will order them to.’ As he spoke, Morgrim felt a sense of resolution he had never felt before, not even after Snorri’s death. The bloodshed inflicted by the asur was so outrageous, so wild, performed with such abandon that he could scarcely believe he had once entertained notions of making peace with them. Under their veneer of superiority they were as bloodthirsty as any lurking creature of the mountains. They were animals.

Morgrim drew his axe and held the blade up before him. It reflected the gold dusk-light dully, picking out the intricate knotwork on the metal. He pointed it up at the distant figure of the sapphire dragon, still tearing across the battlefield and lashing tongues of flame down on the warriors beneath its massive span.

‘I curse you,’ he cried, his voice as withering as gall. ‘I curse you in the name of immortal Grimnir and the spilled blood of my people. By my blade, I shall find you. By my blade, I shall hunt you down and I shall end you. This is my oath, made in the name of my cousin, made in the name of vengeance, which shall bind us both until death finds us.’

Morgrim’s arm shook as he spoke, not from weakness but from fervour. His battle-axe whispered its own response – a sibilant yes, barely audible over the clamour of the field. The runes glowed angrily, throbbing from the steel like torchlight. Morek watched, awe-struck.

‘It is alive,’ he said, staring at the blade. ‘You have awakened it.’

Morgrim felt the truth of that. The dragons had kindled something, unlocked something. He remembered Ranuld’s prophecy, the mumbled words under the mountain. He could feel Azdrakghar humming between his fingers.

The battle was already lost, ripped from his fingers by the arrival of the dragons, but other battles would come. The dawi would learn, growing stronger and more deadly even as the elgi crowed over their reckless slaughter.

‘Do what you can to shield the fighters,’ he said coldly. ‘We will retreat – for now. Vengeance will come.’

Even as he said it, the word struck him as absurd. How many causes for vengeance had there already been in this messy, dirty war? How many more would come before the end, piling on one another in an overlapping maze of grudges and resentments?

It mattered not. For the present, all that mattered was keeping what remained of his forces intact, preserving them and holding them together. Then the counsels would begin, the recriminations, the renewed oaths. All of them would home on to one thing, and one thing only.

How do we kill the dragons?

Morek hesitated a moment longer, loath to be part of anything but pure defiance. To fall back, even temporarily, was anathema. Eventually, though, even he bowed his grizzled head.

‘It will be done,’ he said.

By then, Morgrim was no longer listening. He had turned his mournful gaze back over the battlefield. It was rapidly turning into a charnel-pit.

We will learn, vowed Morgrim, watching the blistering attack runs of the sapphire drake and marvelling at its unmatched destruction. We will learn, and then we will come back.

He felt the axe shiver in his fist.

This is not the end.

Imladrik had no idea how much time had passed. Hours seemed to go by in which he had no awareness of anything at all, though they might well have

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