Another guard – it looked like Lugni but he died so fast it was hard to tell for sure – gurgled his last breath and also slumped off the wagon. Glancing over his shoulder, Krondi watched their bodies smack off the road like dead cattle and swore an oath to Grimnir towards their vengeance.
Several of the surviving guards were wounded. Some had arrows in their shoulders, others cuts or grazes from near misses. At least all four of the wagons were still intact but the road through the gorge was hard, better suited to travellers on foot than mules and iron-banded wheels.
Krondi cursed himself for a fool again. Then he cursed the elves.
‘This road joins the dawangi pass to Kundrin hold,’ he said to the hooded dwarf, pointing at a fork in the gorge. ‘It’s little more than a track but we can lose them in there and make for Thane Durglik’s halls. Once we have sanctuary behind his walls, we can go back out and hunt these cowards down.’
The hooded dwarf nodded, but didn’t stir beyond that. His head was bowed and he was muttering beneath his breath. Krondi did not recognise the words, for they had the arcane cadence of magic.
From the brief glances he’d had and the shouted reports of the guards farther back on the wagon train, Krondi reckoned on six raiders. Twenty dwarfs against six raiders was an uneven contest but the elves had them at range, at the disadvantage of terrain and could pick them off. There was also no guarantee that there weren’t more raiders lying in wait. No, to stand and fight was foolish. Better to run and find safe haven. Though all evidence pointed to it, they did not seem like mere bandits either and this was what disquieted Krondi the most.
He was reining the lead mule in, turning the bit so its head faced towards the fork he wanted to take, when a shadow loomed overhead, crouched down at the summit of the high-sided gorge.
A dwarf yelled ‘Archers!’ before he was cut off by an arrow in his heart. It punched straight through the breastplate, came out of his back and impaled him.
‘Ghuzakk! Ghuzakk!’ Krondi urged the mules that gaped and panted with the last of their failing strength.
The fork that would take them out of the gorge and to the winding trail that led to Kundrin hold was closing.
From above, steel-fanged death came down like rain. Though the dwarfs raised shields, several of the guards were struck in the leg or shoulder. One screamed as he was pinned to the wagon deck by his ankle. When he lowered his shield, a second shaft pierced his eye and the screaming stopped.
A terrible, ear-piercing shriek was wrenched from the mouth of one of the mules on the leading wagon. Moments later the poor beast collapsed and died, unable to go any further. Its companion slumped down with it, similarly exhausted. Krondi was pitched forwards and clung to a hand rail to stay in his seat. Abandoning the reins, for they were no use to him now, he instead concentrated on keeping his shield aloft to ward off the relentless arrow storm. It was studded with shafts in seconds, several of the barbed tips punching straight through the wood mere inches from his nose.
‘Thagging bastards!’ Krondi leapt off the wagon as it slewed to a halt and nosed into the dirt road with only the collapsed bodies of the mules to slow it. The hooded dwarf beside him made the jump at the same time. Miraculously, the arrows had yet to hit or even graze him.
‘Old one,’ Krondi called to him, ‘here!’ Sheltering beneath a rocky overhang, he gestured to the hooded dwarf, who followed.
Despite the furious attack, several of the guards yet lived and were making their way from the wreckage of the other three wagons to join up with Krondi. Two tried to raise crossbows against the archers but were struck down before a bolt was even nocked to string. Of the rest, three out of the original twenty-strong band made it into cover.
An injured dwarf, Killi, was crawling on his belly towards them just a few feet from the safety of the overhang. One of the other guards went to drag him the rest of the way but Krondi hauled him back.
‘No, they’ll kill you too,’ he snapped.
A moment later, three arrows thudded into Killi’s back.
Then it stopped.
There was no sight of the elves above or those on the road behind. As if an eldritch wind had billowed through it to carry their enemies away, the gorge was deserted.
Krondi knew they were still there watching. Either they had run short of arrows or they were waiting to see if the dwarfs would venture from safety.
‘No one moves,’ he told the survivors.
Dwarfs can stay still for hours, even days. During his service in the armies of Gotrek Starbreaker, there was a dwarf Krondi knew, a real mule of a warrior. Lodden Strongarm was his name, a veteran of the Gatekeepers who had stood guard on the same portal into the Ungdrin Ankor for many years. Krondi knew him because he had been the warrior sent to relieve him from his post when the previous incumbent of that duty had died in battle. Three weeks Lodden had waited, unmoving by the gate. He only stirred to sip from a tankard of strong beer or to nibble from a chunk of stonebread, the only victuals he had to sustain him. Like the mountain, Lodden had stood guard and would not shirk or grumble for he had no one to grumble to. Finally, when Krondi had come to take Lodden’s place, the old Gatekeeper had grown long in beard, his skin dusted with fallen debris from the mountain to such an extent he looked almost part of it. He didn’t voice complaint when Krondi arrived, but merely nodded and returned to the hold.
Waiting was easy for dwarfs. They
