Not since his old campaigning days had Krondi felt the same wrath and desire to enact vengeance against an enemy as he did now. Of the party that had left Zakbar Varf, he alone had walked the long road to the summit of Kazad Kro. Every step he took, his ire for the indignity visited upon him at the trading outpost had increased.
After what felt like another day, he had at last reached the great gilded gate of the city. A huge effigy of the king was emblazoned upon it in relief, and the guards on the wall had granted admittance reluctantly. Wary eyes had watched him as he passed beneath the vaulted stone arch, and an escort of warriors had met him as soon as he set foot into the city proper. Krondi didn’t know what had transpired when the High King had come to Kazad Kro but it had certainly soured the attitude of some of its citizens.
For outsiders, hill dwarfs were hard to distinguish from those who lived beneath the earth under the mountains, but Krondi could see the differences well enough. Fairer haired with sun-baked skin, they stood a little taller or less stooped on account of the fact they didn’t spend all of their days crawling through tunnels. But they weren’t as broad and the layer of soot and grit commonplace under the nails of all but the best preened of dwarfs wasn’t present in the hill folk.
In spite of these differences, Krondi had still felt a kinship with them as he passed through their smithies and fletchers, markets and jewel-cutters, and hoped the king would have the same empathy for his mountain brethren too.
Sadly, the old dwarf campaigner would be disappointed.
Krondi was now kneeling in the hold hall of the king himself, his back still aching, his feet still sore and his pride more wounded than ever.
‘Lower…’ the voice uttered again, hoarse with age or overuse, putting him in mind of a crow by the way it rasped. It wasn’t hard to imagine beetling little eyes like black pearls, the suggestion of a hooked beak in the shape of the king’s nose, the avian sweep of his cheekbones and receding hairline, black fading to pepper grey at the fringes.
‘I am as low as I can get.’ Krondi attempted to stoop further, but a sharp pain in his knee prevented him sinking much more than another inch or two.
Evidently dissatisfied, the crow-king squawked again, ‘Rundin, help this dawi show the proper obeisance.’
Krondi glared up under his eyebrows, muttering an oath. The hill king stared back, bird-like and imperious. Something glittered in his dark little eyes. It might have been pleasure.
A heavy-armoured dwarf behind Krondi put a meaty hand on his shoulder. It felt like a mason’s block. Leaning, exerting a little pressure as he did so, the warrior whispered into Krondi’s ear, ‘I’m sorry, brother,’ and pushed.
Failing to hide a grimace, Krondi sank another half a foot.
‘Am I to kneel or genuflect?’ he grumbled under his breath.
‘Better,’ said the king. ‘Now rise.’
The dwarf called Rundin tried to help him back up, but Krondi shook off his hand. ‘I can manage well enough,’ he snapped, to which the other dwarf merely nodded and stepped back. ‘And he is not my king,’ he hissed between his teeth.
Skarnag Grum sat upon a gilded throne. A long stairway of stone steps led up to it, crested by a circular dais engraved with runes. Beringed fingers, festooned with gems, clacked loudly against the golden arms of the throne as the king vented his impatience. A jewel-encrusted gold crown sat upon his head, so large and grandiose his neck was braced with an aureate gorget to support it.
Though his gilded trappings, his armour and royal vestments shone, the king did not. Unlike most of the other hill dwarfs, Skarnag Grum’s skin was pale and waxy. Krondi fancied if held up to the light of a lantern you would see his bones and organs through the thin parchment of his flesh.
Overlong nails and black-rimed teeth spoke of matters occupying the king’s mind that exceeded the necessity for personal grooming. Even his beard, also festooned with gems and ingots of precious metals, was unkempt.
Apart from his warrior protector, Krondi and the king were alone in the grand hall of Kazad Kro. Like its liege-lord it was opulent, with tall shining columns of stone and a wide aisle of silver flagstones that led to the vaulted throne itself. Banners and tapestries lined the walls, hinted at by the flickering embers of brazier pans suspended from the high ceiling on gold-plated chains. Furs and silks lay strewn in a penumbral gloom not so far removed from the dwarf halls beneath the mountains, though some of the materials were distinctly elven in origin.
Krondi’s warrior instincts had not been completely dulled by his time as a merchant under Nadri Gildtongue and though he could not see them, he felt the presence of further guards lurking in the darkness and knew then why the hill king had devised his hold hall in this way.
‘Speak then,’ said Grum, wafting his hand disinterestedly in Krondi’s vague direction. ‘Time is precious, dawi.’
Krondi was still trying to work out if the hill king
