‘Three towers, high walls, a keep and a well equipped garrison, it’s not exactly an urk hut is it now,’ Morgrim chafed, once they were out of earshot. ‘We need to pummel it, soften the elgi until they’re ready to break, then assault. Tunnellers too. I’d suggest three.’
‘Thom, Grik and Ari,’ said Snorri, naming the three tunnels. ‘Clan miners are already setting to the task, the Sootbacks, Blackbrows, Stonefingers and Copperfists.’
‘How soon until they’re fully excavated?’ asked Morgrim.
‘Several days.’
‘Our siege works will be ready for a first assault within the hour,’ said Drogor. ‘We could have the walls down by nightfall if we push hard. Tunnels would finish them off.’
The glint in Snorri’s eye as he ran a hand over the carriage of one of Ironhandson’s stone throwers suggested he liked that idea, but Morgrim was quick to dispel it.
‘We should rest and attack at the dawn, wait until the tunnels are more advanced,’ he said.
‘A night attack would terrify the elgi,’ Drogor countered.
‘Having seen their discipline, I doubt that. In any case, our forces are spent and would do well to rest.’ Morgrim tried to keep the argument from his tone.
‘We’ll bombard them instead,’ Snorri declared, slapping the stone thrower’s frame with the flat of his hand. He turned to Drogor. ‘Have the king of the Varn bring his war machines up and assail the walls. No sleep for the elgi this night,’ he grinned.
Drogor bowed and went immediately to find Ironhandson. Like many of the kings he had retired to his royal quarters until needed.
‘Hrekki won’t be pleased at being disturbed,’ muttered Morgrim. ‘He’ll be on his fifth or sixth firkin by now.’
Snorri was dismissive. ‘Let him moan,’ he said. ‘Not all dawi of royal blood have gone to their beds for the night.’
The cousins had reached the edge of the camp and Snorri mounted a rocky hillock so he could gesture to the distant, brooding figure of Brynnoth.
The king of the Sea Hold was crouched down, a plume of pipeweed smoke escaping from his lips that trailed a vaporous purple bruise across the twilit sky. The silhouette of his ocean drake helm sat beside him, a predatory companion. Though he had borne the brunt of the fighting, he had yet to remove his armour or accept healing of any kind.
‘He is marred by this,’ Snorri observed, striking up his own pipe.
‘Do you think any of us will not be by the time this is over, cousin?’
Snorri had no answer, contemplating as he smoked.
‘How’s the hand?’ Morgrim asked after a short-lived silence.
‘Hurts like a bastard.’ What Sorri’s reply lacked in eloquence, it more than made up in its directness.
‘I watched you fight. Never seen you better, cousin.’
‘Even with a gammy hand – ha!’
Snorri looked askance at his cousin, but Morgrim was in no mood for jests.
‘You want to kill the elgi, don’t you? It’s like you hate them, Snorri, and don’t care what you have to do to vent the anger that comes with it.’
Again, Snorri fell to silence.
‘Keep at it and it’ll kill you, cousin. That’s why I pulled the throng back. It was the only way to get you to stop.’
The alarum bell pealing out across the camp interrupted them. All three dwarfs drew their weapons. Even Brynnoth was up.
‘Elgi?’ the king of the Sea Hold called.
‘Could be an attack?’ suggested Morgrim, put in mind of an elven sortie from the gates.
Snorri shook his head at them both. ‘Our look-outs would have seen it before it got this close, that’s the camp alarum.’
They ran down off the hillock and back through the entrenched war machines. From deeper in the camp there came the sound of further commotion. A horn was braying and there was the beat of distant drums tattooing a marching song.
‘Not elgi,’ breathed Snorri, his face thunderous.
Morgrim espied banners, waving to and fro above the throngs. They bore the red and blue of the royal house of Everpeak.
‘The High King,’ he said.
Snorri was already scowling. ‘My father is here.’
The war machines from Karak Varn had been brought forwards and were loosing their deadly cargo by the time the High King’s royal tent was up and Gotrek seated upon his Throne of Power. A single dwarf was granted audience with him, but the meeting was far from cordial.
In the half-light of the tent, Snorri returned the fierce glare of his father with one of equal reproach.
‘I did what I did for the Karaz Ankor, and would do it again,’ he pledged.
Supping on his pipe, Gotrek merely glowered.
The High King’s tent was festooned with banners and statues of the ancestor gods. All three were represented in chiselled stone, each a shrine of worship for when Gotrek wanted to make his oaths. They were shrouded, smoke clouding the room in a dense fug, drowning out the light from hanging braziers and lanterns. A thick carpet of rough crimson material, trimmed with gold, led up to the High King’s seat. Even though he wasn’t yet clad in his battle armour and instead wore a travelling cloak of tanned elk hide over tunic and hose, he still cut an imposing figure. A simple mitre with a ruby at its centre sufficed in place of his crown, but Gotrek’s rune axe was nearby, sitting in its iron cradle, shimmering dully in the gloom.
‘Have you nothing to say to me, father?’ Snorri had expected wrath, reproach, even censure. The silence was maddening. He snorted angrily, ‘I have a war to fight,’ and was turning when Gotrek spoke at last.
‘A little profligate, my son,’ uttered the High King in a rumbling cadence, ‘to loose the mangonels and onagers so indiscriminately.’
Biting his tongue, Snorri faced him again but
