Drutheira.
She was to be their overseer. Sevekai scowled inwardly, and wondered if she had requested this duty. It would not surprise him in the least.
‘We move now,’ he said.
They needed to find elves first, some asur to kill and steal from before they ambushed again or met up with the sorceress.
It would be as it was before, only this time they would be brazen and leave a survivor.
‘Follow me,’ said Sevekai, the route burning brightly like a torturer’s fire in his head. ‘We have elves and dwarfs to kill.’
Snorri and Morgrim were skirting the foothills when the dauntless peaks of Karaz-a-Karak towered above them through mist and cloud. Monolithic ancestor statues tall as the flank of the mountain loomed into view, silently appraising the nobles with stern stone countenances.
Shading his eyes from the sun, Morgrim looked up in awe. ‘I see Smednir and Thungi, sons of Grungni and Valaya.’
Several hours had passed since their encounter with Imladrik and his dragon, but the memory of it remained – as did the burning insult Snorri felt at the beast’s sudden change in temperament. But to the prince’s credit, he kept it hidden.
Snorri followed his cousin’s gaze, then looked further across the mountain to an eagle gate, one of the lofty eyries through which the honoured brotherhood of the Gatekeepers kept watch on the upper world. Beneath and beside the chiselled portal hewn into the very mountainside were more dwarf ancestors.
‘And there is Gazul and your namesake Morgrim, at Grimnir’s side.’
All of the ancestors, their siblings and progeny were rendered as immense cyclopean statues around the flank of Karaz-a-Karak. Crafted in the elder days, they reminded all of the Worlds Edge of the hold’s importance and closeness to the gods.
With the hold in sight, the mood between the cousins began to improve.
‘More than once, I thought we were bound for the underearth and Gazul’s halls,’ said Morgrim.
‘Bah, not even close, cousin. You fret too much.’ Snorri slapped him on the back, grinning widely. He thrust his chin up, breathed deeply of the imagined scent of forges and the hearth he would soon enjoy. ‘Lords of the mountain, cousin. Both of us. Ha!’
Morgrim’s own declaration was less ebullient. ‘Lords of the mountain, Snorri.’ He looked down at his cousin’s ruined hand. ‘And with the wounds to prove it.’
Snorri sniffed. ‘A scratch, Morgrim, nothing more than that.’ When his eyes alighted on a figure waiting on the road ahead, his smile faded. ‘Oh bugger…’
‘Eh?’ Morgrim was reaching for his hammer when he came to the same realisation as Snorri. ‘Oh bugger.’
Furgil Torbanson, thane of pathfinders, stood in the middle of the road with a loaded crossbow hanging low at his hip on a strap of leather. At the other hip he carried a pair of hand axes in a deerskin sheath. In place of a helmet, he wore a leather cap of elk hide, three feathers protruding from the peak. Lightly armoured, most of his attire was rustic, woven from hardy wool and dyed in deep greens and browns as befitted a ranger.
He was not a dwarf given to saying much, but his eyes gave more away in that moment that his tongue ever would. ‘You have been missed, lords of Everpeak.’
Four other rangers blended out of the foothills. Dressed in the same manner as Furgil, they also carried various pots and pans about them. One also had a brace of conies tied to his belt, another had a pheasant.
‘Are we having a feast?’ Snorri ventured hopefully.
‘No young prince, we are not,’ said a stern, unyielding voice from farther up the road. When a hulking, armoured warrior, much larger than the rangers, stepped into his eye line, Snorri groaned. ‘Thurbad,’ he muttered, nodding to the captain of the hearthguard. ‘I take it my father sent you to bring me back?’
‘He did.’
Thurbad’s brown beard was resplendent where the rangers’ were scratchy and unkempt. His gromril armour shone, though the cloak around his shoulders achieved much to conceal it. A chest plate inscribed with a dwarf face glowered at them both from within the folds of the ranger cloak. His honorific was ‘Shieldbearer’, a name he had earned time and again in service of his liege-lord.
‘And I also assume that my father is not happy with me?’
Thurbad’s chin, much like the rest of his granite face, was like a slab of rock.
‘He is not.’ He looked down, noticed the prince’s bandaged hand and frowned.
‘Lost some fingers to a rat,’ Snorri explained.
Thurbad’s frown deepened.
‘It was a big rat.’
‘You’ll go to a temple of Valaya and have your hand seen to before going to the High King,’ said Thurbad. His tone made it clear there would be no argument.
‘And after that I’ll feel my father’s wrath?’
Thurbad’s jaw twitched then clenched at what he saw as disrespect.
‘Yes, young liege, then you will feel the High King’s fury like a furnace fire has been lit under your arse. Follow. Now.’
With a curt word he dismissed the rangers, who were led by Furgil into the wilds.
Armour clanking, Thurbad stalked away. Not far from the road, a cohort of hearthguard was waiting.
Morgrim waited until Thurbad was out of earshot before he spoke. ‘Not quite the welcome home we had envisaged, cousin.’
‘I would almost rather be back with the drakk,’ Snorri moaned, dragging his feet after Thurbad and his warriors.
CHAPTER SEVEN
