‘Then declare grudgement against him. Tie your beards together and fight Varnuf. Show him who the High King of the Karaz Ankor is. I’ll do it now, father. Challenge him in your name.’ Snorri began to turn.
‘No! Do not suggest it. Do not even dare. If the only way a king can maintain order is to pummel his fellow lords into submission, his would be a short rule. Stand down or I shall put you down, by Grungni I swear it.’ Such was the intensity in Gotrek’s eyes that the prince shrank from it and was rooted to the spot.
Snorri rallied quickly. ‘Can I do nothing that meets your standards, father? Without chastisement and being brought to heel? Ever do my achievements fall short. What must I do to earn your respect?’
Gotrek sighed again, like he was a bellows and all the air was escaping from within him.
‘Not this.’
‘Then what? What must a son do to gain his father’s favour? He who vaunts all others above him out of spite.’
Gotrek had no answer. He dared not speak in case in his anger his words betrayed him.
‘You are a great king, my liege.’ There was a grimace of inner pain on Snorri’s face as he spat the words. ‘But you are a poor father.’
He turned around and stalked from the Great Hall.
Breathing hard, heart pounding in his chest, Gotrek watched him go.
It was several moments before he could speak again. When he did, it was to ask a question of the shadows.
‘Why won’t he heed me?’
From the darkness, a smoke-wreathed figure answered.
‘He is still young, and burdened with the weight of expectation,’ said Ranuld Silverthumb. Hidden from sight, he watched the prince keenly. ‘Do not be too hard on yourself, my liege.’
Gotrek’s shoulders slumped and he broke out his pipe to draw deep of its calming embers. ‘I am striving to leave him a legacy of peace, of a lasting realm unfractured by war and death. Yet he is more belligerent than ever.’
‘Were you so temperate when you mustered your armies during the greenskin purge? Or when you knocked Grundin and Aflegard’s heads together? What about the time when you journeyed to Kraka Drak and fought King Luftvarr for his fealty?’ Ranuld emerged from the darkness to add his smoke to that of his king’s. ‘You have fought your wars, my liege. Not only that, you won them all and have carved a great legend for the book of deeds. When Grungni calls you to his hall, you will sit at his table.’ He gestured to Gotrek’s departing son with his pipe. Snorri had only just reached the doors and slammed them on his way out. ‘Not so for Snorri Lunngrin, now Halfhand.’
Gotrek laughed. ‘Is that what they’re calling him now?’
‘His cousin thought of the name.’
‘A worthy honorific, I suppose. He said there were rats in the deeps of Karak Krum, who walk on two legs not four.’
‘And who speak.’
Gotrek turned to Ranuld Silverthumb, but the runelord was not mocking him.
‘And who speak, yes.’
‘It was a rat that gnawed off your son’s hand.’
The silence held an unspoken question that the runelord answered.
‘There are creatures in the deeps of Karak Krum, but they are not rats. At least, not as we know them.’
‘I’ll have the ironbreakers look into it. Borin can muster the lodewardens and seal up the underway. No dawi will set foot in there again.’
Ranuld said nothing. His mind was far away, lost to some unfathomable thought.
‘He’ll need a gauntlet for that hand,’ said Gotrek.
‘My apprentice shall fashion one under my tutelage.’
Gotrek half-glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. ‘And the other?’
‘Az and klad as you requested, my liege. But it will take some time. Master runes always do.’
Gotrek’s gaze returned to the distant bronze door of the Great Hall.
‘I hope he is worthy of it.’
‘That, my liege,’ said Ranuld, slowly disappearing back into the darkness, ‘is not up to you.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Old Magic
Morek had been listening to the rinkkaz from an alcove behind his master. Dutifully, he remained silent throughout the summit with his head bowed.
As Ranuld Silverthumb returned to the shadows he strode past his apprentice, uttering a single word.
‘Come.’
Morek followed, marvelling at how the statue of Smednir slid aside as his master worked the earth runes on the hidden doorway it concealed. Like many of the lesser ancestors, Smednir dwelled in the penumbral darkness that haunted the edges of the Great Hall. Few knew of the statue’s presence, let alone the existence of the hidden passageway that lay behind it.
Lost in thought as he counted the six hundred and thirty-four steps of the spiral down into the first of the deeps, Morek started when his master spoke.
‘You are prepared for what is before you, runesmith.’
From Lord Silverthumb’s tone, it was difficult to tell whether it was a question or even one that he wanted answering.
‘I am, master.’ The feebleness of his own voice surprised Morek.
Ranuld Silverthumb barked back at him.
‘I know you are, wazzock. I have made certain of it, sure as steel.’
Morek fell into silence again at the sudden rebuke, which only earned further reproach.
‘Have you no tongue, zaki? Bitten off by a grobi hiding under that last step was it?’
Morek resisted the urge to look back to see if there actually was a greenskin crouched under the last step. Their echoing footfalls, clacking against the stone, seemed louder in that moment.
Smoothed by the rivulets of water trickling from some underground lake or stream, the walls of the stairwell were also chiselled with runes of warding and disguise. None but a runesmith, or someone who was accompanied by one, could enter this place and not lose his way. By their natures, dwarfs were secretive but there were none more clandestine about their craft than the runesmiths. Other than its enchanted sigils, there was little else to distinguish the long, winding, descending corridor.
It was wide,
