‘Don’t you think that the war will come to us?’ Rundin asked of Orrik’s back, the other king now departing too. ‘I cannot muster the warriors of Kazad Kro or the rest of the skarrens without your help. With it, we can join with Gotrek, end this war quickly. I know it!’
Neither Kruk nor Orrik answered. They were leaving and the rangers would not stop them. No hill dwarf would draw on another, not without grudge.
‘It will come to us,’ Rundin called after them. ‘Not this day perhaps, maybe not for a decade or more, but war will rage and come to our gates. Alone we will perish, but together we have a chance.’
‘Go back to the Kro, Rundin of the Ravenhelm,’ Orrik replied, slowly disappearing into the wooded darkness. Kruk was already long gone. ‘And serve your king as you pledged oath to do so.’
Rundin seethed. His teeth were clenched, his fists tight as his knuckles cracked impotently. ‘I serve my people,’ he said to the air and the shadows.
‘What shall we do, my lord?’ Kerrik Sternhawk was at his side, wringing his hands fearfully.
‘Go back,’ said Rundin. ‘There is nothing else to do.’ He met the beardling’s gaze. ‘Speak to no one of this.’
‘I won’t, my lord.’
‘I have to convince them, Kerrik, that this is right.’
‘What if you can’t, my lord?’
‘Then we’ll all be doomed, lad. Every thagging one of us.’
The rows of dwarfs marching from the flank of the mountain seemed endless.
Soaring high above a thin layer of cloud on the back of Vranesh, Liandra had never seen so many of the mud-dwellers in one place.
Since the sacking of Kor Vanaeth and her arrival at Tor Alessi, she had learned King Caledor had insulted them. Some grievous slight had made their oafish chieftain decide upon war. Liandra relished the opportunity to wet her blade on the dwarfs, mete out her revenge for what they did to her city.
She was tempted to fly lower, harass the dwarf army’s flanks and rearguard, spit flame over their war machines, but decided against it. A lucky shot from one of their ballistae could shear Vranesh’s wing easily enough, and there were many in the wagon train that followed the armoured dwarf hordes. Doubtless, many more would be marching under the earth, along roads lost to darkness and filth. Perhaps the elves could flood the tunnels and drown a great many mud-dwellers before they even reached Tor Alessi. She decided to suggest it to Prince Arlyr upon her return.
It would almost be worth losing her quarry to see that. The dark elf had been close, the one from the gorge that had left its spoor and eluded her for eight years. In her mind, Liandra had transformed the creature into a spectre of the one that had killed her mother on the burning shores of Cothique. Though the perpetrator of her mother’s murder was dead, this spectre represented everything Liandra hated about the dark elves. After the dwarfs had been defeated at Tor Alessi’s gates, an outcome of which she was certain, she would resume her hunt.
Dark elf, dwarf, it didn’t matter to Liandra. Imladrik was right, she was a supremacist, utterly convinced of the asur’s superiority over all sentient races. Crushing the dwarfs in the Old World was the first step towards dominion. Then, with a strong and thriving colony on the mainland, the high elves could turn their attention to Naggaroth and the overthrow of Malekith.
Having seen all she needed to, Liandra turned Vranesh about and headed back towards Tor Alessi. In her head, she saw the flames renewed, first at Cothique then Kor Vanaeth. She had seen something else too, a third vision framed in fire, but had banished that one from her thoughts with a shudder. Steel returned quickly, hardening her heart, strengthening her arm and conviction.
‘All of them will burn,’ she whispered to Vranesh.
The beast growled, low and threatening, its voice lost on the wind.
Several days had passed since their close encounter with the dragon rider. Drutheira had no idea why they had been spared, but she had no intention of wasting her reprieve either. She sat cross-legged in front of a pyre of blood-slicked skulls, hunkered beneath the half-broken roof of a ruined outhouse. It had been a trading post before the dwarfs had razed it. There were no bodies, but the raiders-turned-fugitives had discovered several graves buried in the hard earth.
Behind her, Malchior and Ashniel were flensing the skin and meat off the elf riders Sevekai and his warriors had killed. The small band of reavers had been utterly unprepared for the assassins and died without any fight. Their headless corpses would be left to rot, sustenance for the carrion flock already circling overhead.
She was weak. They all were, and she needed the knives and quarrels of the shades for the communion of blood with her dark lord.
Crimson smoke was already coiling from the piled skulls when she summoned the other sorcerers.
‘Come forth, make the circle,’ she hissed, her limbs trembling.
Both her fellow coven members looked gaunt and wasted. Their efforts to hide from the dragon rider had been taxing in the extreme. Malchior was weary, but Ashniel managed to make daggers with her gaze.
‘Sit. Now,’ Drutheira commanded.
Once the circle was made, she began to incant the rites. Red vapour coalesced into something more corporeal and Drutheira felt the chill of Naggaroth knife into her through her robes. She wrapped her cloak tighter, speaking the words of communion faster and faster, Malchior and Ashniel echoing every syllable.
A face half-materialised in the crimson fog but then collapsed as swiftly as it formed.
‘No…’ Drutheira barely had breath to voice her anguish.
Communion had failed, or rather it was made to fail.
She sagged, head slumping into her lap, and
