‘Only hope, my prince. Hope in an old friend to do what is right. That is all.’
Snorri laughed. ‘I expected my father to be less understanding.’
‘Oh, make no mistake, my prince, grudges against Thagdor, Brynnoth and Valarik have been writ. Retribution for their transgression will be taken in wergeld or actual blood, the Starbreaker has avowed it, but not until the war is done.’
‘They best hope it claims them, then,’ muttered Snorri, knowing well his father’s wrath.
Furgril merely nodded.
‘Tromm for the beer, but I should be on my way.’
Snorri didn’t answer immediately. His mind was elsewhere, back during his carefree days of adventuring with Morgrim in the lower deeps. He glanced down into the encampment, knowing his cousin was somewhere below, preparing for the march. It would have to wait, Snorri decided.
‘Tell my father we will hold here for a week but no more. If his throng hasn’t reached us by then we will have to march.’
‘I’ll tell him, my prince.’
Furgil was already on his way, signalling to his rangers who waited silently for him below, when Snorri called out to him.
‘You are a loyal servant of the Karaz Ankor, Furgil. It’s a pity your countrymen are not like you.’
Furgil paused but didn’t answer. He left as quietly as he’d arrived, headed east to the host of the High King.
‘Summon my war council,’ Snorri said to the hearthguard once Furgil had gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
War of the Beard
‘That is what they are calling it, my king.’
‘Even for elgi that is bold,’ said Gotrek. ‘They mock us with the very name of this conflict.’
Thurbad didn’t disagree, so just nodded.
After a short rest in the Mootlands of the half-folk, the army of Karaz-a-Karak and its vassal lords was preparing to move on. Furgil had recently returned bringing news of the prince’s intention to wait for his father. A week was not long, however, and winter ground made for a difficult march, even for dwarfs. Time could not be wasted if they were to meet Snorri’s deadline.
Gotrek cast a mantle of red velvet, trimmed with eagle feathers, over his shoulders. Thurbad attached the pauldron pins, then tightened the clasps of the king’s gromril armour so it hugged his waist.
He groaned. ‘Been too long vacillating in my throne room,’ said Gotrek. ‘Must have gotten fat.’
‘Winter padding, my king.’
Gotrek smirked at the hearthguard, who hadn’t even paused to acknowledge his joke.
‘Aye, something like that.’
He would have preferred a hold hall, a roaring hearth at his back as he donned his armour, but out on campaign a tent would have to suffice. Gotrek scowled at its weakness, wishing for solid stone above and about him. The wars with the greenskins and the monsters of the Ungdrin were vicious affairs, cramped, brutal and close up, but at least they were beneath ground. Sky and forest were not to the High King’s liking, and made him uneasy.
‘Should I have marched before now, Thurbad?’ he asked candidly.
Now the hearthguard paused, halfway to buckling a leather weapons belt.
‘You may speak your mind,’ Gotrek told him. ‘Have no fear of grudgement.’
Thurbad looked the High King in the eye. ‘No, my king. You did what was necessary to protect the Karaz Ankor. A calm head should always prevail over a rash one, or so my father always said.’
‘Then he was a wise dawi, your father.’
‘Tromm, he was.’
‘It would have spared Grimbok his fate, your hearthguard too and the life of Gilias Thunderbrow, if I had thrown in with my son and marched.’
‘He is in the Hall of the Ancestors now,’ said Thurbad. ‘I could wish no more for him than that. As for the others…’ He looked away for a moment, and Gotrek knew he was picturing the wretched dwarfs, their beards shorn, their ancestry taken from them. Even in death, their shame would cling to them like a miasma, bound forever to Gazul’s Gate through which the unquiet could not pass.
Gotrek put his hand on the hearthguard’s shoulder.
‘We will avenge them.’
Thurbad nodded, buckled the High King’s belt and stepped back.
‘You are klad, my king,’ he said, handing Gotrek his axe.
‘To think,’ said Gotrek as he took the weapon in his hands, ‘we were once allies.’ He ran his thumb over the blade, drawing a ruby of blood that ran all the way along the axe’s gromril edge.
‘Will you punish him, my king?’
‘Snorri did what he thought was right. He predicted war and war we have got, sacking the elgi settlement didn’t cause that. It was already done when our kin died on the road and Agrin Fireheart lost his life. But, yes,’ added the High King, ‘I will punish him.’
Over fifty thousand amassed in the army of the High King. More were coming from the north and south but would not reach them in time. It wouldn’t matter. Gotrek was resolved to meet up with his son and march on Tor Alessi until its walls were down and its people ash on the breeze.
‘War of the Beard,’ he snorted, suppressing a sneer. ‘They are owed, Thurbad. The scales are unbalanced and I mean to redress them with death. It is a different conflict we shall bring to the elgi, not of beards, but a War of Vengeance.’
The kings of Kagaz Thar and Kazad Mingol looked around furtively.
Even surrounded by their warriors, shrouded in the gloom of the shaded glade in the forests beyond Kazad Kro, they looked uncomfortable and slightly afraid.
‘Why have you brought us here, beardling?’ King Kruk asked of Kerrik Sternhawk.
The liege-lord of Kagaz Thar was dressed in a leather cloak fashioned to look like overlapping leaves. His armour was rough and rugged like tree bark and he wore muddy kohl around his deep-set eyes. An unkempt beard framed an angular face with bushy eyebrows and a flat knot for a nose. Gnarled as oak, bitter as a winter storm, King Kruk was far from happy at being summoned by Skarnag Grum. ‘The High
