Hammer-armed dwarfs from the Sootbrow clan thumped the cracks, widening the breach with each successive blow. Miners by trade, the Sootbrows worked with steady momentum like they were at the rock face hewing ore.
‘Ho, hai, ho, hai…’
Their labouring song was mesmeric. Even when one of their number was felled by an arrow and gargled his last, they did not pause or falter.
The war machines were silent. King Ironhandson had ordered an end to the barrage as soon as Prince Snorri had blown the signal to march. Nadri had been glad of it, muttering an oath to Krondi as they advanced on the city. How far away his life as a merchant seemed now. He spared a brief thought for Heg before the arrows started flying, hoping his brother was still safe in the Sea Hold.
With a sickening splintering of wood, the gate broke apart. A forest of spears glittered on the other side. Behind them, a host of angry and defiant elven faces.
Shields up, the dwarfs barged forwards. Some spears found a way through, skewering mail or splitting plate. With their shields facing elven aggression in front of them, the dwarfs were vulnerable to arrows from above. Even when over a hundred dead littered the gateway, the sons of Grungni did not relent.
Unable to hold back such a determined tide, the elf spear line buckled and the dwarfs poured in.
An elven lordling wearing shining silver scale, a feather of amethyst purple poking from the tip of his helmet, and riding a white horse, raised his sword to urge the garrison of Kor Vanaeth on. Archers mounted on the steps loosed the last of their remaining shafts into the courtyard that was clogging quickly with elven dead.
Nadri took an arrow in his shoulder before he raised his shield to block three others. Head down, seeing mainly booted feet and the skirts of elven scale mail, he swung like a blind man in a bar fight. The hard thwack of his axe blade hitting flesh then bone was the only sign he was still in the fight. A spear tip glanced off his helmet, setting a ringing in his ears and a dense throb in his skull. Blood pulsing, heart thundering, he lashed out and was rewarded with a half-strangled scream.
Sweat filled his nostrils, some his own, some his warrior brothers’. He heard their grunting, the muttered curses.
‘Thagging elgi!’
‘Dreng elgi!’
‘Uzkul, uzkul!’
No way out of the melee, surrounded by the din of battle and dying, Nadri roared his own war cry.
‘Krondi! Dammaz a Krondi!’
A brief cessation to the killing allowed him to look up. The elves were retreating further into the city, but their numbers and formation were scattered. Most of the archers had emptied their quivers so abandoned their bows in favour of knives.
Nadri saw a spearman brought to his knees by one of the hearthguard. Another smacked the elf around the face, his neck snapping wildly to the left before he slumped down and was still.
A second clutched the air, his spear wrenched from his grip before the hammers were upon him, silencing his screams.
Spurring his mount the lordling rode at King Brynnoth, who had demanded to lead the attack personally, uttering a battle cry to his elven gods.
The king of the Sea Hold shoulder barged the steed, thudding his armoured bulk into the beast’s chest and stealing away its breath. With a shriek, its ribcage cracked; heart failing, the horse collapsed and bore its rider with it.
Brynnoth showed no mercy as he cut off the lordling’s screaming head.
That was an almost an end to it.
Seeing their commander slain was enough to break the elves. Those who could, ran; those who couldn’t, surrendered. Several of the pleading elves died before Prince Snorri entered the fray to call a stop to it.
Nadri stood in the middle of the carnage, breathing hard, an ache in his back and shoulder where the arrow remained.
‘Get the healers to look at that,’ said a voice behind him. He half turned and saw the Prince of Karaz-a-Karak. He was about to kneel when the prince stopped him.
‘You’ve fought and bled, by Grimnir,’ he said.
For Agrin Fireheart, the dwarfs of Barak Varr had been given the honour of breaking the gate, and it didn’t take forty thousand to sack a city of eight. Some of the walls had collapsed, weakened by stone throwers, brought down by grapnels, but the incursions of the other dwarfs had been mild compared to the effort of the Sea Hold clans.
Prince Snorri met Nadri’s gaze. There was steel there, and stone.
‘No son of Grungni who has fought this day kneels to me. Go find a healer, lad. The deed here is done.’
He walked on, several of his thanes in tow.
Nadri had expected to feel satisfaction, a sense of closure, even relief. He felt none of these things. Looking around at the corpses, the greedy looting that followed, he found he felt nothing at all.
A warrior of the hearthguard hurried over, his heavy armour clanking. He’d run a good distance, heaving and gasping in his suit of plate and mail, lifting his visored helm to speak.
‘My prince.’
Snorri took the proffered spyglass, nodding thanks, before aiming the device at the sky. The lens was grimy, smeared by dirt and smoke. Snorri had to rub it with his thumb to clear it, and tried not to rush.
‘What do you see?’ asked Drogor, sidling up beside him.
The pair of them were beyond the borders of the city, which was still burning. Once the brief siege was over, Snorri had returned to the heath where he could plot his next move. He’d had a map in his hand,
