‘We have paid a great price for this,’ said the elf, finally answering the dwarf’s question. ‘Here we witness the passing of a golden age, I fear.’
He watched the elves and dwarfs as they fought together to cleanse the battlefield of the last remnants of resistance. Some had already begun to celebrate victory together and exchanged tokens and talismans. For many, it would be the last time they would see one another.
So different and yet common purpose had formed a strong bond.
‘But perhaps we can usher in a new one. Either way, let us hope this is an end to hell and darkness.’ He added, without conviction, ‘To war and death.’
‘Aye,’ Snorri agreed, ‘it is the province of more youthful kings, I think.’
Malekith nodded, lost in introspection.
‘I had expected more joy, elfling,’ said the dwarf. He leaned forwards to clap Malekith’s armoured shoulder. ‘And you say that we are dour.’
The elf laughed, but his eyes were far away.
‘We should feast,’ he said at last, returning to the present and leaving his troubles for now, ‘and honour this triumph.’
‘Back at Karaz-a-Karak, we will do just that, young elfling.’ Some colour had returned to the dwarf’s cheeks at the prospect of beer and meat. ‘And yet you still seem moribund. What is it, Malekith? What ails you?’
‘Nothing…’ The elf’s eyes were fixed again on a dark horizon, his mind on the remembered fire that had ravaged his body. It felt familiar somehow. ‘Nothing, Snorri,’ he said again, more lucidly. ‘It can wait. It can certainly wait.’
CHAPTER ONE
Rat Catching
The tunnel was dank and reeked of mould. Darkness thicker than pitch was threaded with the sound of hidden, chittering things. Far from the heat of the forges, here in the lost corridors of the underway, monsters roamed. Or so Snorri hoped.
‘Bring it closer, cousin. I caught a whiff of their stink up ahead.’
Morgrim held the lantern up higher. Its light threw clawing shadows across the walls, illuminating old waymarker runes that had long since fallen into disrepair.
‘Karak Krum,’ uttered the older dwarf, his face framed in the light. A ruddy orange glow limned his black beard, making it look as if it were on fire. ‘The dwarfs there are long since dead, cousin. No one has ventured this deep into the Ungdrin Ankor for many, many years.’
Snorri squinted as he looked at Morgrim over his shoulder.
‘Scared, are you? Thought you Bargrums had spines of iron, cousin.’
Morgrim bristled. ‘Aye, we do!’ he said, a little too loudly.
Two dwarfs, standing alone in a sea of black with but a small corona of lamplight to enfold them, waited. After what felt like an age, the echo of Morgrim’s truculence subsided and he added, ‘I am not scared, cousin, merely thinking aloud.’
Snorri snorted.
‘And who do you think you are, oh brave and mighty dawi, Snorri Whitebeard reborn?’ said Morgrim. ‘You have his name but not his deeds, cousin.’
‘Not yet,’ Snorri retorted with typical stoicism.
Grumbling under his breath, Morgrim traced the runic inscription of the waymarker with a leathern hand. There was dirt under the nails and rough calluses on the palms earned from hours spent in the forge. ‘Don’t you wonder what happened to them?’
‘Who?’
‘The dawi of Karak Krum.’
‘Either dead or gone. You think far too much, and act far too little,’ said Snorri, eyes front and returning to the hunt. ‘Here, look, some of their dung.’
He pointed to a piled of noisome droppings a few inches from his booted foot.
Wrinkling his nose, Morgrim scowled. ‘The reek of it,’ he said. ‘Like no rat I have ever smelled.’
Snorri unhitched his axe from the sheath on his back. He also carried a dagger at his waist and kept it close to hand too. Narrow though it was, he didn’t want to be caught in the tunnel’s bottleneck unarmed.
‘Make a point of sniffing rats, do you, cousin?’ he laughed.
Morgrim didn’t answer. He glanced one last time at the runic marker describing the way to Karak Krum. Passed away or simply moved on when the seams of gold and gems had run dry, dwarfs no longer walked its halls, the forges were silent. Merchants and reckoners from Karaz-a-Karak had brought tales of a glowing rock discovered by the miners of Krum. It had happened centuries ago, the story passed down by his father and his father before him. It was little more than myth now but the stark evidence of the ancient hold’s demise was still very real. Morgrim wondered what would happen if the same fate ever befell Karaz-a-Karak.
Snorri snapped him out of his bleak reverie.
‘More light! This way, cousin.’
‘I hear something…’ Morgrim thumbed the buckle loose on his hammer’s thong and took its haft. Leather creaked in the dwarf’s grip.
From up ahead there emanated a scratching, chittering noise. It sounded almost like speech, except for the fact that both Morgrim and Snorri knew that rats could do no such thing.
Morgrim turned his head, strained his ear. ‘Grobi?’
‘This deep?’
In this part of the underway, the tunnel was low and cramped as if it hadn’t been hewn by dwarfs at all. Such a thing was impossible, wasn’t it? Only dwarfs could dig the roads of the Ungdrin Ankor that connected all the holds of the Worlds Edge Mountains and beyond. And yet…
‘A troll, then?’
Snorri looked back briefly. ‘One that talks to itself?’
‘I once encountered a troll with two heads that talked to itself, cousin.’
Snorri shot Morgrim a dubious look.
‘No. Doesn’t smell right. Can tell a troll from a mile away. Its breath is like a latrine married to an abattoir.’
‘Reminds me of Uncle Fugri’s gruntis.’
Snorri laughed, and they moved on.
A larger cavern loomed ahead of the dwarfs, unseen but with the shape and angle of the opening suggesting a widening threshold, the scent of air and rat together with the sound-echo hinting at a vaulted ceiling. Dwarfs knew rock. They knew it because it was under their nails, on their tongues, in their
