‘For now, it will suffice as a bandage,’ he said. He looked at the dark stain that was already blossoming red all over the kerchief. ‘It’s a savage bite.’
‘Aye,’ Snorri agreed ruefully, ‘I’ve half a mind go back in there and retrieve my fingers from its belly.’
‘Bet you would as well.’ Morgrim was exploring their surroundings, looking for a way onwards and preferably back to a part of the underway they knew. ‘That would be half-minded,’ he mumbled, attention divided. ‘Ha, ha!’ he laughed, turning to face his cousin. ‘Half a mind, to go with half a hand.’
Snorri scowled. ‘Very funny. Haven’t you found a way out of here yet?’
‘There’s a breeze…’ Morgrim sniffed, venturing forwards. Without the lantern, even with the sharp eyes of a dwarf, the darkness was blinding. ‘Coming from somewhere–’
Splintering rock, a loud smack of something heavy hitting stone and then a grunt arrested Morgrim’s reply.
It took Snorri a few moments to realise this was Morgrim and his cousin had fallen into some unseen crevasse.
‘Cousin, are you hurt?’ he called, only for the darkness to echo his words back at him. ‘Where are–’
Hard, unyielding stone rushed up to meet him as Snorri slipped on the same scree that had upended Morgrim. Daggers of hot pain pierced his back as he went down and he cracked his skull before the ground slid from under him and he fell.
Another thud of stone hitting flesh, this time his, like a battering ram against a postern gate. He felt it all the way up his spine and his left shoulder.
Groaning, Snorri rolled onto his right side and saw Morgrim looking back at him with the same grimace.
‘That bloody hurt,’ he said.
Morgrim eased onto his back, looked up at the gaping crevasse above. Dust motes and chunks of grit were spilling down from above like rain.
‘Must have fallen thirty, forty feet.’
He pushed himself up into a sitting position.
‘Feels like a hundred.’ Snorri was on his back, rubbing his swollen head.
‘Nothing to damage there,’ said Morgrim. He tapped the helmet he wore. A pair of horns spiralled from the temples and a studded guard sat snug against the dwarf’s bulbous nose. ‘Should wear one of these.’
‘Makes you bald,’ Snorri replied, prompting a worried look on his cousin’s face. A small stone struck Snorri’s brow and he grimaced again.
‘See,’ said Morgrim, getting to his feet and helping his cousin up. ‘Enough lying down.’ Once Snorri was vertical again, he brushed the dirt off his armour and checked he still had his hammer. ‘We need a way out.’
Without the lantern, it was hard to discern exactly where they had fallen. Doubtless it was one of the lower clan halls of Karak Krum, but there was precious little evidence of that visible in the shadows that clung to the place like fog.
Snorri sucked his teeth.
‘A pity you chucked our lantern oil.’
Morgrim bit his tongue to stop from swearing. Instead he looked around, sniffed at the air. ‘I smell soot,’ he said after a minute or so, then licked his lips. Another short pause. ‘Definitely soot.’
Snorri frowned, and went to recover his axe from where he’d dropped it when he fell. ‘All I can smell and taste is grit.’ He spat out a wad of dirt, hacking up a chunk of phlegm at the same time. ‘And rat,’ he added.
Morgrim’s face darkened. ‘No rat I have ever encountered spoke or carried a blade.’
‘That is because rats can’t do such things.’ Snorri tapped him on the forehead and made a face. ‘Perhaps you need a tougher war helm, cousin.’
Morgrim wasn’t about to be mollified. ‘I know what I saw and heard.’ His face grew stern, serious. ‘So do you. There is more than grobi and urk in these old tunnels. Who can say what beasts have risen in the dark beneath the world?’
Snorri had no answer to that. He hefted his axe and gestured roughly north. Even when lost, if a dwarf is underground his sense of direction is usually infallible.
‘Nose is telling me it’s that way.’
‘What is?’ asked Morgrim, though his cousin was already moving.
‘Something other than this thrice-cursed darkness.’ He paused. ‘And your talking bloody rats,’ he added, before stomping off.
Groaning under his breath, Morgrim followed.
CHAPTER two
Whispers in the Dark
Snorri and Morgrim knew there was something in the Ungdrin Ankor, vermin maybe, but definitely an enemy the dwarfs had not faced before. Tales abounded, they always did, told by drunken treasure hunters. Few dwarfs, barring the credulous and the gullible, beardlings in the main, believed such tall stories. But myths made flesh were hard to refute. Morgrim was reminded again of the stories of his father, of the glowing rock unearthed by Karak Krum’s miners. He brought to mind the faces of the savage creatures they had just escaped and decided there was something alarmingly familiar about them.
The two dwarfs spent the next few minutes in silence, listening for any sign of the rats’ return.
After passing through a vast open cavern, its narrow stone bridge spanning a bottomless pit and its ceiling stretching into darkness, Morgrim asked, ‘How is your hand, cousin?’
Snorri kept it close to his chest, taking the axe one-handed as he walked. Blood stained the metal links of his armour where it had bled through the makeshift bandage. Regarding the wound, he sneered, ‘Think you need thicker pampering cloths.’
Morgrim ignored the gibe, reading the pain etched on his cousin’s face. ‘Looks in need of a redress.’
They had left behind the chasm chamber with its narrow, precipitous span and walked a long gallery with a high ceiling. Errant shafts of light cast grainy spears in the darkness from clutches of brynduraz. Such a rare mineral was worthy of mining and Morgrim had wondered then whether the clans of Karak Krum had left willingly –
