There was no time left to worry about the fate of the High King. Thurgin’s march had brought his warriors into the fray. The horns lessened and the drums stopped beating as the dwarfs of Karak Izril waited silently for what they knew would happen next.
Less than a hundred feet away, the enemy came fast and hard on hooves of silver flame.
Thurgin felt the solidity of his clan brothers at either shoulder and smiled.
This would be a good day for the dwarfs.
Vengeance would be theirs.
He shouted, voice louder than a hundred war horns, ‘Khazuk!’
The throng of Karak Izril answered, its many ranks adding to the fury of their reply: ‘Khazuk!’
Axes and hammers began to beat shields, rising in tempo as the riders closed.
‘Khazuk!’
Thurgin slid the ornate faceplate over his eyes and nose until it clanked into place, and the world became a slit of honed anger.
His brothers’ chorus resonated through his helm, chiming with the clash of arms.
‘KHAZUK!’
It meant war.
War had come to the enemies of the dwarfs.
Glarondril the Silvern spurred his riders to greater effort. Standing up in his stirrups, he let the fire of the angry mountain reflect in his gleaming armour. Without a helmet, his long white hair cascaded down the back of his neck like a mane of frost. His eyes were diamond-hard, his jaw set like marble.
The enemy was close; a thick wedge of mailed warriors that seemed to stretch the length of the horizon, clutching blades and shields.
Twenty thousand noble lords at his command, armour glittering with the falling sun, lowered their lances.
They had raced hard and far to reach this hellish plain. Glarondril would not be found wanting on the slopes of the mountain. He would see the battle through to its end, even if that meant his death. Whispering words of command to his mount, he drew the riders into a spear tip of glittering silver.
‘In the name of the Phoenix King,’ he roared, unable to keep his battle-lust sheathed any longer. A sword of blue flame slid soundlessly from his scabbard. ‘For the glory of Ulthuan!’
The enemy were so close… Glarondril saw their hooded eyes, shimmering like moist gemstones, and smelled the reek of their foul breath, all metal and earth.
‘None shall live!’
The blue-fire sword was held aloft as a thicket of lance heads drew down before the charge.
Thurgin felt his body tense just before the moment of impact.
‘Hold them, break them!’ he roared, ‘No mercy! Kill them all!’
Here before them was a foe worthy of dwarf enmity.
The shield wall dug in, backs and shoulders braced. All fifty thousand in this single throng came together. The muster from Karak Izril was large, but far from the largest of the holds. Deeper into the plain, Thurgin knew there were others similarly embattled. He prayed to Valaya for their souls as well his own and that of his men.
Behind the thick infantry formations, he heard the slow tread of the gronti-duraz. Through the dense earth he could feel the tremor of their footfalls as the low, sombre chanting of their masters animated them. Thurgin was glad to have the stone-clad behemoths at his back.
Above, lightning cracked the sky as magical anvils were made ready.
On the far mountain flank to Thurgin’s left, the bolt tips of ballistae twinkled in the dying light through a rolling fog. They looked like stars.
Dwarfs did not need the stars, or the sun. They were dwellers of the earth, solid and determined. They would need those traits today, as they would need all the craft of the runesmiths and the engines of the guilds to overcome the horde upon the plain.
They were foul and wretched creatures that the dwarfs would drive from the Old World forever.
At last the enemy reached them, a collision of barbed lances and mewling steeds against dwarf shields and tenacity.
As he raised his axe to strike, Thurgin knew no quarter would be given.
He would ask for none.
Glarondril and his knights swept into the armoured horde, piercing flesh and shattering bone. Severed heads fell from the necks of his foes as he swept around his blazing blue sword in a killing arc. A jab disembowelled another, as hundreds of lances struck flesh, impaling dozens with every vengeful thrust.
‘I am the Master of Dragons,’ he roared. ‘Behold your doom!’
Incandescent fire spewed from the jaws of the elven mounts. It rose in a tide that burned their enemies to ash. No defence was proof against the Dragon Princes of Caledor. No foe, however determined, could resist their charge. The few who did survive found their attacks repelled harmlessly by dragonscale harder than plate. The beasts snarled in contempt, crimsons, ambers, emeralds and azures, a myriad of colour and fury, tearing at limbs with fang and claw.
Hundreds of the enemy died in the first seconds, spitted by lances, devoured by the dragons or burned alive, their corpses left to ruin in the sun. What began as a contest swiftly became a slaughter.
A leader, his armour thicker than the rest, bellowed a challenge at Glarondril who accepted without hesitation.
‘For the king!’ he shouted above the eager roar of his mount, as he took the enemy leader’s head.
‘For the king!’ urged Thurgin, chopping into the riders blunted on the dwarfs’ wall of shields. A spurt of ichor splashed across the dark lacquer of his vambraces but he ignored it, thumping with his shield and hacking with his axe. The runes on the blade flared like star-fires as it hewed through iron-hard skin like it was parchment.
Though the foe pushed and pressed, using every ounce of their depraved strength, the dwarfs held back the tide. Utterly implacable, the shield wall didn’t budge and the enemy cavalry buckled as they rolled against it. Riders in the rear ranks, unable to arrest their momentum, barrelled into those in front. The enemy’s formation rippled, mounts and riders sent sprawling only to be crushed by those that followed in their wake,
