A ring of armoured hearthguard parted to let him pass.
Battle din faded in the distance as the last few skirmishes between the fleeing elves and pursuing dwarfs subsided. Morgrim looked down on his cousin’s broken, mutilated body and wept.
Snorri was already ashen. A grimace of defiance etched upon his face, he looked far from at peace. In pursuit of destiny, he had died an ugly, painful death.
‘Dreng tromm…’ uttered Morgrim, sinking to his knees.
‘He would not listen,’ said a voice beyond the hearthguard.
Morgrim looked up and through his tears fixed Drogor with a steely glare.
‘Speak plainly,’ he rasped.
‘I told him to wait.’
‘And is that what you did, Drogor? Did you wait? I saw the throng rooted to the spot whilst my cousin was cut apart. Why did you not aid him?’
‘I was forbidden, and by Grungni’s oath I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It happened so quickly, the elgi king striking our prince down like he was a beardling.’
‘And heaping further ignominy on him by cleaving his arm! Gods, Drogor, he will wander Gazul’s underworld a cripple because of this!’
‘Perhaps with your army to reinforce us…’
Morgrim’s face darkened further. ‘We were delayed. By Valaya, the very elements turned on us.’
‘They can be capricious.’
Morgrim glared but Drogor had already lowered his gaze.
‘It is I that failed the prince, Morgrim, not you. I am sorry.’
Bustling through the throng, Khazagrim returned, preventing further recrimination.
‘The elgi have fled, back to their ships,’ he said. ‘We won’t catch them now.’
Morgrim shook his head in disbelief. ‘And so we suffer further indignity. Gather the throng. We’re going back to Karaz-a-Karak to bring the High King the body of his son.’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Awaken my Wrath
Gotrek’s face was as cold as the marble slab upon which his son was lying.
The tomb was hewn by Everpeak’s finest craftsmen, and the hoard of a lesser king would have been needed to fashion it. Opulent yet austere, it was a monument to dwarf grief and a reminder of a father’s abject failure.
‘It should be me,’ he said to the dark.
Thurbad answered. ‘You could not have known the elgi’s intentions, my king.’
His granite features stained by tears, Gotrek looked up to a shaft of hazy yellow light breaching the ceiling. It peeled back some of the shadows that had settled like a veil upon this sombre place. Statues, great monolithic effigies of the ancestors, were revealed in it. They looked down sternly but benevolently on the High King, who still found it hard to meet their stony gaze. The rest of the vast chamber was lost to echoing darkness, a hollow tomb of broken vows and empty promises.
‘He was to be my heir, Thurbad. I never wanted this for him. I strove to carve out a kingdom that he could rule in peace and prosperity.’
‘Yours has always been a just rule, my king.’
Gotrek sagged. He was only wearing a furred cloak, simple tunic and breeches, but he felt the weight of Snorri’s death like twenty suits of chainmail. Old hands gripped the edge of the marble tomb for support.
‘Fathers should not bury sons, Thurbad. This is not the way of things. It should be me lying upon this slab in grim quietude. It should have been me that met the elgi king at Angaz Baragdum.’ The High King let out a long breath that shuddered with the power of his grief. ‘He baited us. Snorri went to meet him on the field and could not have known he was stepping into a trap. It reveals something to us, though,’ Gotrek added, his back straightening as he found inner reserves of strength.
‘What is that, my king?’
‘This Caledor, son of kings, is arrogant. To believe he could set foot in our lands, slay my son and return without retribution… It will be his death when I meet him on the field. Throughout this sorry affair, I have held on to the belief that war could be averted. Even when the first battles were fought, when cities were burning, I clung to the hope that we could still find a way out of conflict and return to some measure of civility. That has ended with the death of my son.’ His fist clenched like a ball of iron. ‘I will level the full might of the Karaz Ankor against these interloping murderers. No elgi will be safe from my wrath, for it has been awakened by this perfidious deed! Every axe, every quarrel and bolt and hammer shall be bent towards the destruction of this enemy in our midst. Vengeance will be done. So swears Gotrek Starbreaker!’
The grongaz echoed like a tomb. Ranuld Silverthumb embraced the silence gratefully, hunched in deep contemplation before the statues of the gronti-duraz. Morek was gone, bound for Tor Alessi and the fourth siege. For his endeavours fashioning the axe and armour of Snorri Halfhand, Ranuld had granted his charge the use of an Anvil of Doom and bestowed upon him the title of ‘master runesmith’.
Great had been the undertaking to forge the prince’s rune weapons. After fashioning the axe, Morek had left the hold in search of what was needed to begin his labours on the armour. Scarred was the young runesmith now, and more furrowed than ever. For the blood and scale of monsters, jewels that could only be found in the dark, forgotten places of the world, were required to craft such an artefact. Rites were not enough; like all magic, rune forging needed ingredients. Since his return, he had not spoken of his journey nor would Ranuld ask him to. The runelord had his own dark travels to remind him of such