‘My sincerest apologies,’ he began, a little out of breath, ‘He has never done that before, except in battle. Something enflamed his anger, I don’t know what.’
‘Perhaps it was a hankering to taste dwarf flesh,’ Snorri chided. ‘I warn you, my meat is bloody tough!’ He brandished his axe meaningfully. ‘And my rhuns are sharp.’
Mortified, Imladrik put his palms together in a gesture for peace and calm. ‘Please, it was a misunderstanding.’
Snorri wasn’t about to back down. The beast had accepted Morgrim without complaint, but railed against his presence. It was a matter of wounded pride now, a sin that the prince of Karaz-a-Karak had in abundance.
‘And if we’d have been aloft when another “misunderstanding” took place? What then, eh? Cast to the earth like crag hawks pinioned by a quarreller’s bolt, left to be dashed on the rocks as a red smear.’ He thumped his chest. ‘I am dawi born, stone and steel. If you wish us dead then fight us face-to-face, you dirty, thagging elgi.’
It was a step too far. Morgrim knew it and went to say something but no words could take back his cousin’s insult.
Imladrik paled, and not from the exertions of his dragonsong. He had to bite back his anger, covering it with a low bow. His eyes glittered dangerously when he rose again, as hard as the gemstones they so closely resembled.
‘I deeply regret this, and offer apology to you both. I shall convey the same remarks to your father, the High King,’ he said to Snorri alone, ‘but you have much to learn of elves, young prince. Much indeed.’
Obeying a snarled command, Draukhain speared into the air and emitted a roar of sympathetic anger. With a few beats of its mighty wings, both dragon and elven prince were gone, lost to the cloud and the endless sky.
‘That was foolish,’ said Morgrim. He had followed the dragon’s searching gaze to a cluster of rocks outlining the clearing but could see nothing amiss amongst them.
‘Foolish was it?’ Snorri turned, but when he saw the look on his cousin’s face his vainglorious pride deserted him. He muttered, ‘Perhaps I did speak out of turn.’
‘Your words were callous, cousin, and ill-considered.’
Snorri looked to his boots, then to his half-hand. His anger, self-directed, rose again. ‘My father has said something similar to me often. Are you going to rebuke me constantly as he does, cousin?’
‘I…’ Morgrim met Snorri’s hurt gaze and knew the prince was just lashing out. The High King was a hard taskmaster, tougher on his son than even his most veteran generals. It would be difficult to bear for any dwarf. In the end, Morgrim relented. ‘No cousin, I will not. But without wings to take us back to hearth and hold, we have a long journey ahead of us. I don’t think we’ll make the rinkkaz. Your father will be wrathful, I fear.’
‘Let him,’ the prince snorted. ‘I would rather walk the road in my boots, facing urk and troll, even my father’s anger, than risk life and limb on the back of a drakk.’ He stomped off down the path, slinging his axe onto his back and swearing loudly with every step.
Morgrim decided not to reply and fell in behind him to let his cousin vent.
The return to Karaz-a-Karak suddenly seemed much longer and more arduous.
Crouched in a thicket of dense scrub, Sevekai fought to catch his breath. When the dragon had reared up, he had fled with the others back down the ridge.
The ambush site was close by, as yet undiscovered.
Killing dwarf merchants in the darkness was something he had a taste for, but he was no dragon slayer. In truth, the creatures terrified him. Even those slaved to the will of the druchii he treated with wary apprehension. It had taken him all his willpower to stay hidden when the beast had bayed for their blood.
Verigoth was still shaking and took a pinch of ashkallar to calm his nerves. The narcotic was fast-acting but the tremors still remained.
‘Did it see us?’ he asked.
Sevekai shook his head, reliving the moment in a waking nightmare.
‘We’d already be dead if it had,’ he breathed. His gaze fell on Kaitar, who was watching them all impassively. ‘Are you not disturbed at all, Kaitar?’
He shrugged, as bizarre and incongruous a gesture as he could make in the circumstances.
‘We are alive. What is there left to fear?’
Numenos had taken out his blades to sharpen them and calm his shattered nerves. Though his body still trembled, his hands were steady. It spread slowly up his arms, to his neck and back.
‘Is it ice or blood you have in your veins, druchii?’ he asked, glancing up from his labours to regard Kaitar.
‘Neither,’ Kaitar answered with a laugh.
Watching the exchange keenly, Sevekai couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
Mirth changed to murder with the shifting of the breeze on Kaitar’s face. ‘We should go back and kill those two dwarfs.’
Sevekai shook his head. ‘That door is closed to us.’
‘The beast is fled,’ Kaitar pressed.
With a flash of silver, Sevekai’s sickle blade was at Kaitar’s throat. His voice was thick with threat. ‘I said no.’
Kaitar raised his hands, showing Sevekai his palms in a plaintive gesture.
‘As you wish.’
Glaring at him for a moment longer, Sevekai lowered his blade and returned it to its place on his baldric. He addressed the warband. ‘The storm is abating,’ he said, gesturing to the breaking cloud. ‘We will need fresh attire by the time the dawn breaches it.’
Before sailing to the Old World, his mind was implanted with Malekith’s sorcery. Into Sevekai’s mental pathways, he had poured memories of the secret trade routes of the dwarfs, those learned many years ago when he had befriended their High King. Snorri Whitebeard was long dead, so too Malekith’s affinity for dwarfs. Only cruelty remained, and a desire for vengeance against those who had wronged him and cast him from his rightful throne.
Sevekai felt these desires vicariously like hot knives in
