Can anyone help me find short novels that were posted on official website of Warhammer Online Age Of Reckoning. There were 4 of them.
Grimnir's Paradox by Nathan Long. A short story about a dwarf slayer
A Fistful of Choppas by Mike Lee. A short story about an orc choppa.
The Sword is Forged by Nathan Long. A short story about a Knight of the Blazing Sun
Cruel as Ice, Cold as Steel by Mike Lee. A short story about the Blackguard.
Thank you.
Guys help please!!!
Feel like burning like a bright wizard? Being as green as a gobbo? Robust like an Ironbreaker? Bloodthirsty like a witch elf? Feel free to speak as them here.
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Re: Guys help please!!!
Post#2 » Tue Dec 01, 2015 10:42 am
Grimnir's Paradox
Will try to find more. It sems like images were lost forever so only text.
Spoiler:
Chapter One
Halgrin Gustagsson gently probed his black eye with a stubby finger, then stuck the finger in his mouth and waggled his loose tooth. He had to admit that Olnir Ironhall threw a respectable right cross, and not a bad left hook either. He started through the woods again, continuing his patrol. If his old friend had been there with him he would have complimented him on his strength, but Olnir was flat on his back in old Borek the bone-setter’s tent with a broken right arm and a fractured skull.
That had been an accident, and Halgrin was as sorry as anybody about it. Olnir had put a foot wrong earlier that night, as the two of them had slugged it out by the steep bank of the river where Thane Redhelm’s company had made camp, and he had fallen hard on some rocks that jutted from the swift flowing current.
He and Olnir had volunteered to leave Ekrund Fortress with Redhelm’s rangers seven days ago, when word had come that orc Big Boss Luggo Raspgob was marching up from the Badlands with five thousand orcs, ready to help Gazbag and the Bloody Sun Boyz drive the dwarfs out of the Dragonback Mountains once and for all. The only thing that stood in Luggo’s way was Knifewind Gorge, a deep canyon with a raging mill race of a river at the bottom that could sweep away five thousand orcs in an eyeblink, and the only way to cross that river was Knifewind Bridge.
That was why Thane Redhelm and his company were sneaking deep into orc-held territory with a wagon filled with specially crafted barrels of naphtha-laced blackpowder. If they succeeded in blowing up the bridge, Luggo was stopped. If they failed, Ekrund and the Dragonback Mountains might be lost forever.
Halgrin stopped and peered into the dense forest, stroking his thick brown beard and listening to the sounds of the night. There seemed nothing amiss. He yawned and stumped on, cursing the drowsiness that threatened to overwhelm him. He and Olnir had shared the last watch since the mission had begun, patrolling the perimeter of the dwarf camp together, and Olnir’s constant grumbling and bickering had helped keep Halgrin awake. Now, without Olnir at his side, griping on about the rain and the cold, patrol was a lonely, boring chore.
Olnir had been his best friend since they were beardlings. They had been born of the same clan, grew up in the same hold, and had apprenticed at the same forge, and when word had come from High King Thorgrim Grudgebearer that the greenskins were mustering in Ekrund and all able-bodied dwarfs were needed to stand against the tide, they had traveled together to Ekrund Fortress and volunteered to fight and die in defense of their land and their people. But though the two friends came from similar circumstances, they were as different as night and day.
Halgrin always saw the light side of things. Even in the worst of circumstances he could find something to joke about, or some reason to hope. Black-bearded Olnir was the exact opposite. Even in the best of times he could find something to complain about, and some reason why he was sure it would all go sour before long. These opposing views of the world had been the source of all their arguments, and this wasn’t the first that had ended in fisticuffs, but it was the first where of them had been so badly wounded that they had to see the bone-setter.
Halgrin paused again to peer around and listen to the night. All quiet. He sighed and sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, then drew out his pipe and filled it. A smoke would calm his mind. He lit the pipe and took a deep draw, flashing back to the argument that had led to the fight. Strangely, it hadn’t been one of their usual rows. Instead, it had stemmed from a part of Halgrin that he liked much less than his generally sunny disposition – his pig-headed stubbornness and greed.
***
It had been after a long day’s march that it started. Thane Redhelm’s dwarfs had made camp between a thick stand of trees and the deep cut of a swift running river, and were sitting down to a meal of rabbit and trail bread and hearty dwarf ale, when Olnir had started complaining that Halgrin was being selfish.
“You already have an ancestor weapon,” Olnir said, filling his mug from the keg on the back of the supply wagon. “What will you do with another one?”
“I will wield them both,” laughed Halgrin, thumping his chest with his fist. “One in each hand, like a hero from the great days of yore!”
“You’ll cut off your own foot, is what you’ll do,” said Olnir dryly.
The other dwarfs around the fire chuckled at that. Even Thane Redhelm smiled.
Olnir drew his hammer from his belt and held it out. “Look, Halgrin. Look what I fight with. A mining hammer. It isn’t even a proper weapon. Now that you have two good axes, why can’t you lend me your new one?”
Halgrin frowned, uncomfortable, thinking back to the night, two days out from Ekrund Fortress, when Thane Redhelm’s rangers had stumbled upon a dwarf patrol led by the fabled Alethewn Stoutgut, who were getting trounced by a gang of Bloody Sun orcs that outnumbered them five to one. “You know I can’t do that. It was given to me by the great Stoutgut himself, for rescuing him and his lads from those greenskin scum.”
Olnir rolled his eyes. “We were all there, Halgrin,” he said. “And we all saved him. It’s where I broke my good hammer.”
“Aye,” Halgrin agreed. “But it was I who stopped that choppa from cutting off Alethewn’s head. He gave the axe to me. It would be disrespectful to give away such a gift.”
“Fine, then!” snapped Olnir, throwing up his hands. “Keep it! Give me the other one instead!”
Halgrin stiffened and stared at him. “Give you the axe of my grandfather’s grandfather? The axe that slew the great dragon Lattirjarn? The axe that my father said should be held in no hands but mine? Never!”
Olnir sighed. “All right, Gustagsson. I give up.” He shook his head in disgust. “By Grungni, I believe if you had seven axes, you would crawl on your hands and knees before admitting they were too heavy.”
The dwarfs around the fire laughed at that, but Halgrin only snorted.
“The trouble with you, Olnir Ironhall,” he said, taking a sip of his ale and gesturing with his mug. “Is you’re so convinced that the world is a terrible, unfair place, that, for you, it is. If you go around snarling at the world, the world snarls back.” He grinned, smug. “If you were to face the world with a smile and a kind word, the world would return the favor, and axes might start coming your way.”
It was then that fists began to fly.
***
Halgrin woke with a start and blinked around, for a moment completely lost. Then memory returned and his heart lurched. He had fallen asleep on patrol! He jumped up, hands dropping to his axes. How long had he slept? Had anyone noticed? And what had woken him up?
A movement out of the corner of his eye brought his head around. A little hunched shadow was moving through the trees, and there was another beyond it. Goblins! And they were creeping toward the camp! A heavy footfall thudded to his right. An orc. No. Three orcs! Halgrin drew his axes and sucked in a breath to shout a warning to his comrades, but before he could make a sound, a dwarfish bellow of surprise and rage echoed through the woods, followed by the clash of steel and savage orc roaring.
Halgrin launched himself forward and pounded through the trees, as all around him the orcs and goblins did the same. A goblin saw him and angled his way, shrilling and raising its crude spear. Halgrin smashed its face in with a backhand and ran on, dread dragging at his guts like a lead brick. He had fallen asleep! He had let the greenskins past his position! He had endangered the camp!
A running orc charged toward him. Halgrin stopped short and veered, getting behind it, then cut it down with a swift one-two. The sounds of battle grew louder as he leapt its body, and he called to the ancestor god Grungni that the dwarfs had had some other warning, or that there were only a few greenskins.
But as he burst from the trees into the clearing by the river he saw his calls had gone unanswered. A full score of orcs were raging through the camp, smashing and killing, while a seething carpet of goblins swirled around their legs, waving spears and curved daggers. Half-dressed dwarfs fought desperate battles before every tent, and more lay hacked to pieces on the ground before the fire.
Faril, one of the rangers, gutted an orc and roared defiance at three more. Gammir the thunderer blew a goblin’s head off, only to be stabbed in the back by another. He fell screaming into the fire. Guarding the cart that carried the barrels of blackpowder, Thane Redhelm, bare to the waist, fought a towering, mad-eyed, iron-clad orc who wielded two blood-crusted cleavers each as long as a manling was tall. Halgrin recognized the bellowing monster as Warboss Rotmung Stinkfang, so named for the decaying green tusks that jutted up on either side of his coal scuttle mouth. He and his boys had been harassing dwarf scouting parties all across the Dragonback Mountains for weeks, softening the ground for the coming of Big Boss Luggo Raspgob’s mighty waaagh.
To the thane’s left, Borek the bone setter defended his tent with an axe and a surgeon’s saw, trying to fight off a big orc and a throng of goblins. Halgrin cursed and ran to help. Olnir was in that tent, and defenseless – all because of their foolish fight. He had to protect him.
Halgrin smashed into the backs of the goblins, severing spines and heads with his two magnificent axes. The rest of the puny greenskins turned, shrieking and stabbing, while the orc continued to press Borek back toward the tent. Halgrin shattered goblin spear hafts and bashed their daggers from their hands, but the unaccustomed weight of his second axe threw his balance off and he stumbled into a rusty blade, taking a cut over his eye.
Beyond the goblins, the orc kicked Borek to the ground, then crushed his skull with an enormous spiked club and started for the tent.
“No!” cried Halgrin.
He hacked through the goblins and charged the orc’s back, swinging for its spine, but once again the weight of his weapons threw him off and he only gashed its hip. The massive monster turned, roaring with pain and anger, and swung at him with the club.
Halgrin ducked, then buried his grandfather’s axe in the side of the orc’s neck. It howled, dark red blood spraying from the terrible wound, and lashed out as it died. Its club caught Halgrin on the top of his helm and he went down, sparks exploding behind his eyes and the world going black. The last thing he saw before the dark waters of unconsciousness closed over him was the remaining goblins swarming through the door flap of Borek’s tent and shrilling with glee.
***
When he woke again, Halgrin wondered if he’d been buried alive. It was dark, and there was a crushing weight on his chest, and a smell in his nose so foul he thought he must be in a mass grave. Then his vision cleared and he found himself face to face with a dead orc. That accounted for the smell, and the orc lay on top of him, which accounted for the weight. He turned his head to try and see out from under the enormous carcass, then had to close his eyes to keep from vomiting. His brain felt loose inside his skull, like a cannonball rolling around in a tin bucket.
After a moment he mastered his nausea and opened his eyes to a scene of ruin and death. All over the campsite, a cold pre-dawn rain beat down on dead and dismembered dwarfs and greenskins, and sizzled on the embers of a fire-blackened tent. He wondered for a moment if the dwarfs had by some miracle won the battle, for he could hear no orc grunting, nor any goblin gibbering, but then he saw Thane Redhelm lying dead in the middle of a ring of butchered greenskins and knew they had not. Were any dwarfs alive, they would not have left their leader’s body lying in the mud like a dead dog.
Halgrin slowly worked his way out from under the orc, then dragged his axes out after him. As he waited for another wave of nausea to pass he saw that he was the only one still armed. Dwarf and orc alike had been stripped of armor, weapons and gold. The supply wagon and the wagon carrying the blackpowder barrels had been taken too. Stinkfang’s band had killed and looted and moved on. Halgrin, hidden under the fallen orc, was the only dwarf they had missed.
That thought sparked another and he looked up, turning his head toward Borek’s tent. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one alive. Perhaps the goblins had seen Olnir lying in his cot and thought him dead already. Halgrin pushed to his feet, then swayed unsteadily as the world spun around him. When he recovered, he picked up his weapons and crept toward the tent, then pushed aside the flap with the head of his grandfather’s axe.
“Olnir?” he whispered. “Do you live?”
There was no answer from within. He edged forward and ducked inside. Three dead goblins lay on the floor of the dark tent, their heads caved in, and for a moment a candle of hope kindled in Halgrin’s chest, but then he saw a larger shape near the tent’s back wall and the flame guttered and died. It was Olnir, lying on his back with a snapped off goblin spear through his heart, and his old mining hammer hanging from his limp left hand, while his broken right arm hung useless in a sling at his side.
Halgrin sank to his knees before his dead friend, dropping his axes and lowering his head to his chest. “I did this,” he said. “All of it. It’s all my fault.”
A sob escaped him. Everything that had happened that night could be traced back to his greed and stubbornness. Had he done what anyone else would have done and lent Olnir one of his axes, they would not have had their fight, and if they hadn’t had their fight, Olnir wouldn’t have cracked his skull and broken his arm, and if Olnir hadn’t cracked his skull and broken his arm, he would have been on patrol with Halgrin, and Halgrin wouldn’t have fallen asleep and let the orcs past his position to slaughter the camp.
With a cry of self-hatred, Halgrin snatched his dagger from his belt and pushed it through his thick brown beard to his throat. It was a cruel joke that he who had killed all the others through his foolishness still lived. Well, he would fix that. He would make the massacre of Thane Redhelm’s company complete.
Then he paused.
No. Suicide was a coward’s death, a shameful death. He had already shamed himself enough. There was a better way to die, a way to give his death meaning, and to restore his honor.
He moved the dagger away from his neck and raised it to his head. With his other hand he grabbed a lock of his long hair and pulled it taut, then cut it off at the roots.
Hadir Titankiller - January 9, 2010 03:15 AM (GMT)
Chapter Two
Halgrin scraped the last stubble from his scalp with his dagger, then wiped the hair and blood from the blade and put it away. He had shaved himself bald except for a narrow crest of hair like a coxcomb. Now he stripped to the waist and lowered his head. He didn’t know the words of the Slayer’s Oath, for he had never considered becoming one. Hopefully the god would accept his imperfect vow in the spirit in which it was given.
“Grimnir, father of valor,” he said. “For my shame and the wrongs I have done, I vow to you that I will die in battle, facing the mightiest creatures I can find. I hope, through my death, to redeem myself in your eyes, and that you will find me worthy to enter your halls.”
The pledge said, he rose and picked up his great-grandfather’s axe and the axe that Alethewn Stoutgut had given him, ready to seek his doom, but then he looked at the weapons. A vision came to him. He stood on a mountain of the slain, an axe in each hand. It was glorious, but it was wrong. These axes were the symbols of the pride that had caused the deaths of Olnir Ironhall and all his other companions. They were reminders of his shame. He would not carry them.
He looked at Olnir, still laying where the goblins had killed him, his simple mining hammer hanging from his slack hand, and knew what he must do.
***
As the rain beat upon his shoulders, Halgrin cut into the cold hard earth in front of the tent with his great-grandfather’s axe until the blade was dull, then switched to Alethewn’s axe and did the same, carving out a hole long enough and wide enough for a dwarf to lie in.
When it was shoulder deep, he heard voices approaching the camp, and crouched down. Had the orcs returned? No, it was dwarfs he heard.
“Dead,” said one. “All dead.”
“The dirty, green-skinned savages,” said another.
“How did this happen?” asked a third.
Halgrin recognized the voices - Grundi Dabirsson and Zarri Brugalsson, Ironbreakers from Karak Hirn, and the old engineer, Kazakin Forgeborn. They had all been part of Thane Redhelm’s company. He stood and pushed himself out of the grave.
“It was me,” he said. “I fell asleep on watch. I let them past me.”
The dwarfs stared at him, shocked to see him. All three were bruised and cut and muddy. Kazakin, the white-bearded engineer, used his blunderbuss as a crutch.
“You survived,” Halgrin said. “How did you escape?”
“Orcs knocked us into the river,” said Kazakin. “The current swept us off. Took all this time to walk back.” He nodded at Halgrin’s naked scalp. “You’ve shaved your head.”
Halgrin touched it self-consciously. “I’ve taken the oath for what I’ve done. I will die in battle.”
Grundi, half a head taller than Halgrin, and bulging with muscles, pulled his hammer from his back. “Aye, you will,” he growled through his red beard. “Here and now.”
Zarri nodded and drew his axe, his black brows lowering. “You don’t deserve a slayer’s doom.”
“Now, lads,” said Kazakin. “No dwarf may come between a slayer and his oath to Grimnir.”
“Grimnir wouldn’t have him,” sneered Grundi.
“Grimnir will have anybody,” said Kazakin. “Besides, he’s more useful alive than dead. We’ll need him to finish the job.”
“Finish the job?” said Grundi, turning to stare at the Engineer. “And how do we do that? There’s only four of us, and Stinkfang’s boys have stolen the powder.”
“Probably taking it to Luggo as we speak,” said Zarri, then laughed. “We should let him. He might blow himself up and save us the trouble.”
Kazakin shook his head. “We cannot rely on such a slim chance. We must get the powder back and bring it to the bridge.”
“But how?” asked Grundi. “How are four of us going to get a wagonload of powder away from a horde of orcs and goblins.”
Kazakin turned to Halgrin, his eyes as cold. “Our slayer will get it for us,” he said. “Or die trying.”
***
Halgrin lowered Olnir’s body into the grave, then crossed the two beautiful old axes over his dead friend’s chest.
“May Grungni welcome you into his halls, Olnir Ironhall,” he said, bowing his head.
While the others gathered what few supplies they could from the ransacked campsite, Halgrin filled the hole, then picked up Olnir’s old mining hammer. He held it over the mound of earth. “On your grave I swear, brother. As recompense for the greed that claimed your life, this simple hammer will be my only weapon until I find my doom.”
***
Halgrin lay at the top of a low ridge with Grundi, Zarri and old Kazakin, looking down at the greenskin camp in the valley below them. It was twilight on the night after the massacre of Redhelm’s Rangers. They had tracked the orcs all day, and caught up to them here, a wasteland of rock-strewn hills only an hour or two north of Knifewind Gorge.
“That’s a relief,” said Kazakin, pointing a finger. “They have the powder wagon, and they’ve managed not to blow themselves up yet.”
“Aye,” said Grundi. “But they haven’t made it easy to steal, have they?”
Halgrin saw what he meant. The orcs had raised their tents beside a scrubby woods, and left the powder wagon very close to the trees, with the ponies hobbled. To rescue the wagon, the dwarfs would have to drive it through the whole of the camp, and Halgrin counted at least fifteen big orcs eating around the fire, and more than twice that many goblins scurrying amongst them.
“We’ll have to come at it through the woods,” said Kazakin, chewing his white moustaches. “And then ride like the wind.”
“We’ll never make it,” said Zarri. “They’ll be on us before we turn the ponies.”
Kazakin smiled. “That’s where our slayer comes in.” He said. “He’s going to go down to one side and kill as many orcs and make as much noise as possible, isn’t he?”
Halgrin nodded. “Aye. I will.”
“As long as you don’t fall asleep,” sneered Grundi.
“No more of that,” said Kazakin, as Halgrin balled his fists. “Save it for the greenskins.” He edged back from the ridge. “We wait until moonset, when more of them will be asleep, then--”
He was interrupted by a thunder of hoofs coming up behind. Halgrin and the others turned, then dove left and right as a huge warhorse galloped through them, heading over the hill toward the orc camp. A man in a patched tunic and dented armor leaned forward in the saddle, sword and shield at the ready.
“Hoy!” barked Grundi. “Watch your flanks!”
“Stop, you fool!” hissed Kazakin in a harsh whisper. “Come back!”
The rider looked back as he crested the ridge, then pulled up and wheeled around, surprised. “Your pardon, noble dwarfs,” he said, trotting back. “I did not see you.”
“That’s obvious,” grunted Zarri.
“Who are you?” asked Kazakin. “And what do you think you’re doing?”
The rider, a tall young human with keen blue eyes in a guileless face, pointed back over his shoulder with his sword. “My name is Burgard Wendt, knight novitiate of the Order of the Blazing Sun, and I go to challenge the leader of those savages to single combat.”
“Are you mad?” Grundi laughed. “Old Stinkfang won’t give you single combat.”
“Aye,” agreed Zarri. “His boys’ll have you in the stewpot before you can so much as throw down your gauntlet.”
Wendt frowned. “There is no honor to be won in that.”
Grundi and Zarri rolled their eyes at each other, but Kazakin stepped forward.
“You seek honor, knight?”
“Indeed,” said Wendt. “I have sworn upon the altar of Myrmidia that I shall perform three knightly deeds ere I return to my chapterhouse to take my vows.”
“I’ve got just the thing for you,” said Kazakin. “As knightly a deed as you could wish.”
Wendt beamed. “I would be most obliged to you, dwarf. Tell me what I must do.”
Halgrin glared at the knight as Kazakin and the others led him away from the orc camp, explaining about the wagon and the powder and the bridge. He knew what Kazakin was going to suggest to Wendt, and he didn’t like it. He was seeking his doom. He didn’t need any help. The foolish manling would only get in the way.
***
“Right,” said Kazakin, five hours later. “Here it is.”
They were back at the top of the slope, looking down once again at the orc camp. The moons had sunk below the western hills a short while ago, and only starlight and the low glow of the greenskins’ sunken fire illuminated the scene.
Kazakin pointed at Halgrin and Wendt. “You two go down behind the tents and wait for the signal. When you hear it, start a ruckus. Once you’ve got their attention, we go for the wagon and ride it out as quick as we can.”
“Good,” said Wendt. “And where shall we meet afterwards?”
The dwarfs blinked at him.
“There will be no afterwards,” said Halgrin. “Not for us.”
Wendt’s smile faded. “It seems I will not live to perform my three knightly deeds, then.”
“You will help stop the advance of five thousand greenskins,” said Kazakin. “And save countless lives from slaughter. That is three deeds in one.”
Wendt hesitated, then nodded. “Aye. It is great sacrifice for a noble cause. Very well. In Myrmidia’s name I will do it.”
“Good,” said Kazakin. “Then let’s get to business--“
A female voice interrupted him. “Are you dwarfs of Thane Redhelm’s rangers?”
Halgrin and the others started and looked around. Out of the shadows stepped a slim figure in black, a longbow on her back, tugging down a black scarf to reveal the almond-shaped eyes and sharp-boned features of an elf. Halgrin thought he had never seen a woman so ugly. Wendt, however, stared at her with the glazed look of a bull struck between the eyes with a sledgehammer.
“We are Redhelm’s dwarfs, elf,” said Kazakin, warily. “Who are you?”
“I am Laenfel Silverswift, a scout for Ekrund Fortress,” she said. “Come from the south after spying out the greenskin horde. Why does Knifewind Bridge still stand? I expected to find it destroyed. And where are the rest of your company?”
Halgrin bristled at her preemptory tone. The others did too - all but Wendt, who still made cow eyes at her.
“We’re it,” said Grundi, turning a hard eye on Halgrin. “The rest were killed by orcs, in their sleep.”
“And the powder to blow the bridge is with them,” said Kazakin, pointing over the hill. “We won’t be able to finish the job until we get it back.”
The elf woman stared. “You are going to attack the orcs? Just the five of you?”
“Don’t have much choice, do we?” growled Grundi.
“It will be a great sacrifice, lady,” said Wendt. “A noble deed done to save thousands.”
Laenfel looked north over her shoulder, ignoring him. “I am due to report the greenskin numbers and disposition to Rogrum at Ekrund as soon as possible. I was to let nothing turn me from my path.”
The dwarfs looked at each other, not liking where this was going.
“Better go then, eh?” said Zarri, hopefully.
“But the bridge must fall,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. “You cannot be allowed to fail.” She turned back to them, her face set and grim. “I will stay with you.”
“We wouldn’t want you to put yourself out,” said Kazakin.
“Shouldn’t go against orders,” grunted Grundi.
“I thank you for concern, friends,” said Laenfel. “But I must risk it. I will fight by your side until the bridge falls.”
“You honor us with your presence, lady,” said Wendt.
Halgrin and the others moaned.
She squatted down among them. “Now,” she said. “What are your plans?”
Kazakin sighed. “Right,” he said. “Here it is.”
***
A short while later, Halgrin and Wendt crawled on their elbows toward the greenskin tents. The camp was quiet now but for the rattle of orcish snoring and the shifting of the few goblin guards who huddled around the dying fire.
“How noble Lady Laenfel is,” murmured Wendt. “To risk her life and mission to help us. Truly, I have never met a more beautiful, honorable--“
“Stow it,” grunted Halgrin. “Do you want them to hear us?” Why were humans so fascinated with elves?
Wendt looked up toward the camp, then shrank down again. “My apologies,” he whispered. “I was overcome by admiration for--“
“Shhh!”
Wendt grunted, but fell silent at last.
They reached the back of a filthy tent. Halgrin rose to a crouch and readied his hammer as Wendt drew his sword. Now they must wait for Kazakin’s signal, which would tell them the others were in position.
Halgrin smiled grimly. It would be a fitting revenge to do to the greenskins what they had done to Thane Redhelm and his company - to fall upon them and kill them in their sleep. Of course, the orcs and goblins weren’t the ones who were truly responsible for the massacre of the dwarfs, but tonight Halgrin would lay that villain low as well. That contemptible fool, Halgrin Gustagsson, would meet his end here, and at last make amends for his negligence and incompetence, for his stubbornness and greed. He couldn’t wait to begin.
The signal came – the harsh call of a mountain hawk. Halgrin’s heart thudded. He stood. Wendt joined him, murmuring a short prayer to Myrmidia.
“Knight,” said Halgrin. “Make a door.”
“Aye,” said Wendt.
The novitiate slashed through the tent’s leather wall with a single stroke. Halgrin slipped silently through the cut and looked around. Three orcs slept within. Halgrin raised Olnir’s hammer and crushed the nearest’s skull before it could open its eyes. A second grunted quizzically, and Halgrin smashed its face in with a back swing. The third struggled up, groping for its cleaver, but Wendt jumped in and ran it through the neck. It sank back in a fountain of blood. Halgrin nodded. Three dead without a sound. But the time for stealth was now past.
“Ready, knight?” he asked.
Wendt nodded grimly.
They stepped together to the door flap, took a deep breath, then charged out of the tent into the firelight, roaring at the top of their lungs.
“For Redhelm and Ekrund!” bellowed Halgrin.
“For Myrmidia and the Empire!” shouted Wendt.
The carpet of goblins that slept around the fire leapt up, shrilling in surprise as they grabbed their spears and daggers. But Halgrin and Wendt were already amongst them, bashing heads and chopping through chests and arms. Half a dozen died in seconds, and more ran screaming for the shadows.
The rest recovered quickly, however, and the next moment Halgrin and the novitiate knight were fighting for their lives, while questioning grumbles came from the surrounding tents.
“Come out, you green cowards!” cried Halgrin. “Come meet your doom!”
Sleepy orcish heads poked out of tents and blinked around to see what the noise was about, then roared and burst out, charging toward Halgrin and Wendt, axes and cleavers held high. Halgrin shot a glance toward the powder wagon as they came, and was relieved to see Kazakin cutting the ponies’ hobbles while Grundi climbed onto barrels in the back and Zarri took a seat on the driver’s bench and flicked the reins.
Then a huge orc blocked the view, slashing with a massive cleaver. Halgrin jumped aside and the heavy blade chopped a goblin in two. Another orc loomed on his left, swinging a club. Halgrin ducked and struck back. Beside him, Wendt reeled as an axe blade glanced off his pauldron. A goblin gashed him with a dagger as he recovered.
Halgrin cursed. He was ready to die, but he would feel better about going to Grimnir’s halls if he knew the others had rescued the powder wagon first.
Another orc pushed in, swinging an axe. Halgrin blocked it and dodged the club of the second, but the first orc’s cleaver was coming straight at him. He wouldn’t escape it.
An elvish arrow sprouted from the cleaver orc’s eye. It stumbled, bellowing, and the axe veered to the side. Halgrin took advantage and smashed the orc’s kneecap. It fell into a cluster of goblins. Another arrow thwacked into the neck of the orc with the club. Wendt’s foes were similarly pierced, and the knight cut them down as they howled and scrabbled at their faces and chests.
Halgrin was reluctant to thank an elf for anything, but in this case, he had to admit Laenfel had saved their mission. The wagon was still weaving through the campsite and had not picked up any speed. If the orcs killed Halgrin and Wendt just then, they would have turned and seen it.
Then, they did see it. As Halgrin and Wendt faced another wave of greenskins, Stinkfang’s ugly, broken-tusked head pushed out of the biggest tent and looked around. Halgrin shouted a challenge to draw his attention, but it was no good. The warboss spotted the retreating wagon. He roared and pointed after it.
The orcs and goblins looked behind them, and Halgrin and Wendt made them pay for it, chopping and smashing at the nearest, but the rest broke away and ran for the wagon.
“After them, knight!” called Halgrin.
He and Wendt chased the greenskins, hacking down stragglers as Laenfel’s arrows whistled overhead and dropped a few more. Beyond the mob, Halgrin saw Zarri crack his whip over the ponies’ heads. The wagon picked up speed, rumbling for the edge of the camp, but then, disaster!
As it steered around the last tent, the back right wheel struck a hidden boulder. The wagon stopped dead, the ponies rearing and squealing as the dwarfs flew forward. The wheel was dwarf-built, so it didn’t shatter as a human wheel would have, but the cart was stuck, and the greenskins were closing fast.
“Come on, knight!” Halgrin rasped. “Hurry!”
At the wagon, the dwarfs recovered. Kazakin knelt on the bench and blasted a muzzle-load of gravel at the oncoming mob while Grundi and Zarri stood on the barrels, readying their axes.
The Goblins swarmed in first, climbing the wagon while the ironbreakers hacked at them and Kazakin bashed around with his blunderbuss. Then the orcs hit. The first nearly swept Grundi and Zarri off with one sweep of its axe, but they leapt the blade and chopped him down.
“Straight through!” Halgrin called to Wendt.
They slammed into the greenskins, scattering goblins and smashing orc spines and legs, but Halgrin didn’t slow to fight. As the orcs fell, he bulled through to the wagon with Wendt right behind.
“Kazakin! Whip up the ponies!” cried Halgrin, and ducked below the wagon’s bed to put his shoulder to the axle. “Come on, manling! Push!”
“Pushing wagons isn’t knight’s work,” said Wendt, as he helped Grundi and Zarri hold off the greenskins. “I must fight!”
“It’s hero’s work, curse you!” barked Grundi.
“Get under!” snapped Zarri. “We’ll hold them!”
“Very well,” said the novitiate reluctantly, then crawled in beside Halgrin as clash of battle rang above them.
Kazakin’s whip cracked and the wagon edged ahead as the ponies strained. Halgrin and Wendt heaved, and the blocked wheel ground against the boulder, rising toward the top, but then stopped and sank back.
“Again, Kazakin!” called Halgrin.
More whip cracks, and the wagon inched forward.
“Together,” gritted Halgrin, and he and Wendt pushed with all their might.
Again, the wheel rose up the sloping side of the boulder, but this time it crested the top, then all at once dropped down the other side.
The dwarfs cheered, but as the wagon bounced forward, Halgrin and Wendt were exposed and prone, with greenskins all around. Halgrin rolled aside as an enormous axe chopped down at him. He swept around with his hammer and hauled Wendt up, jerking him back from a goblin’s spear thrust. They backed after the wagon, keeping themselves between it and the greenskins.
Wendt grinned. “Now this will be hero’s work,” he said.
“Not for you,” said Halgrin, shoving him toward the tailgate. “You have two more knightly deeds to perform, remember?”
“But--“ said Wendt.
Grundi grabbed him by the collar and hauled him aboard, cutting him off.
“Sorry, manling,” said Halgrin. “This is my doom, and mine alone.”
He raised Olnir’s mining hammer and shook it at the oncoming orcs. “Come on, you filthy green pigs!” he roared. “Come die with me!”
Hadir Titankiller - January 9, 2010 03:36 AM (GMT)
Chapter Three
The orcs and goblins charged toward Halgrin, roaring and squealing, as the powder cart trundled quickly away behind him. He braced for the impact, bellowing his defiance, but just as the first orc swung its rusty cleaver at him, something dropped down over his arm and head from behind, then pulled tight and jerked him off his feet.
Halgrin squawked with surprise and outrage as he was dragged across the rough ground on his back, shredding his naked skin. He looked down and saw a rope pulled tight across his chest and under his right arm.
The orcs and goblins ran after him, chopping and stabbing at his flailing feet, but they couldn't catch up. He was bumping along too fast. Their attacks did nothing but dig up dirt and grass. Halgrin twisted his head around and saw that the rope was attached to a corner post on the back of the powder cart, and that Grundi and Zarri were reeling it in and looping it around the post as they rumbled along.
"You bastards!" roared Halgrin, spitting out dust and pebbles. "What have you done?"
The two dwarfs just laughed and kept pulling as the slim figure of Laenfel galloped out of the night on Wendt's warhorse and pulled up alongside Halgrin. "Your kinsmen have saved your life, dwarf. Are you that mad, that you would be ungrateful?"
"They have robbed me of my doom!"
"Dwarfs are mad." The elf shook her head and kicked the horse ahead to pace the cart.
After another quarter mile of lacerations and stabbing rocks, Grundi and Zarri finally reeled Halgrin up to the back of the cart, then hauled him over the tailgate.
Halgrin glared at Grundi and Zarri as he lay panting against the stack of powder barrels. "You are both in my book," he gasped. "No dwarf may interfere with a slayer's doom!"
Grundi grinned at him. "We only postponed it, laddie. You don't deserve so quick an end, after what you did."
Zarri laughed. "Ha! Maybe you should miss a doom for each of the deaths you caused. That would be fitting!"
Halgrin surged up, swinging his fist at Zarri's sneering mouth, but the cart bounced over a bit of rough ground and he fell against Wendt instead.
"Easy, lad," called old Kazakin from the driver's bench. "They’ve done you wrong, I'll admit, but you'll have many more chances to find your doom before this war is done. There's always tomorrow."
Halgrin pushed himself upright with Wendt's help and glared at Grundi and Zarri. "It can't come soon enough."
***
They reached Knifewind Bridge just as dawn was breaking. The other dwarfs were relieved to see that it was empty of greenskins. But Halgrin was conflicted. His longing for a good doom made him almost disappointed that Big Boss Luggo's Waaagh! had not yet reached the span. Charging five thousand orcs and goblins would be an epic doom indeed. At the same time, if Luggo's army had been there, it would mean that they had failed, and all of Ekrund would suffer under the greenskin incursion. It seemed that being a slayer could be a selfish vocation if one wasn't careful.
A better hope for a doom was Stinkfang's boys. The warboss and his mob had fallen out of sight behind the wagon after only a quarter hour or so, and Halgrin guessed they were maybe an hour behind at the most, but Kazakin had said that it would take all of an hour and maybe more to set the specially prepared black powder barrels and attach the fuses so they could blow up the bridge.
"It isn't some human ruin," the engineer had said. "That bridge was built by dwarfs to withstand earthquakes, storms and bombardments. The charges are going to have to be placed just so to bring it down."
So Halgrin put aside his grudge against Grundi and Zarri and worked with them, novitiate Wendt, and the old engineer, while the elf woman - who none of them trusted to be able to tie a knot, let alone set a fuse - watched for Stinkfang's approach from a rise near the Ekrund end of the bridge. She had a hunter's horn with her, and would sound it when the warband came in sight.
The bridge itself was nearly Halgrin's doom more than once. It was a narrow span, only just wide enough for two carts to pass each other, and about fifty paces long, but it was suspended high above the Icewind River, which thundered below them while the wind that gave the river and the bridge its name buffeted them mercilessly, numbing their hands and stiffening their joints as they lowered themselves down to the understructure to place the barrels, and threatening to blow them off every moment.
A single stone arch supported the bridge, bearing all its weight and pressing it into the walls of the gorge. The powder barrels had to be placed where the arch met the walls on either side of the river, and then bound there so the force of the blast would break the stone. This meant a lot of dangling over the abyss at the ends of ropes, and balancing precariously on slanting slabs of stone made slippery with the spray of the river and centuries of lichen growth.
Halgrin slipped several times. Once he was wrestling a lowered barrel into the wedge-shaped space between the span and the wall and it got away from him. He made a grab for it and caught it, only to slip off himself. The rope around his waist stopped him, and he swung out over the drop, clutching the barrel, then lost it as the wind slammed him into the span again, breaking his grip.
He stared down, sucking air with his guts sinking, as the barrel dropped away to the river and Grundi hauled him back up into position.
Kazakin glared at him from where he was tying off another barrel under the span. "No more of that, laddie," he said. "We haven't many barrels to spare."
***
The sun was just cresting the peaks of the Dragonback Mountains when Laenfel's horn sounded. Kazakin cursed and looked up just as he was throwing down a bundle of matchcord to Halgrin, who was helping Zarri and Wendt string it along the underside of the bridge.
"More time!" he said. "I need more time!"
"I'll give it to you," said Halgrin. "Pull me up."
Kazakin nodded and waved to Grundi, who, being the strongest of them, had been designated the lifter and lowerer.
"Bring me up too!" called Wendt. "I want to die fighting, not falling!"
"Keep stringing the matchcord," said Halgrin as he started to rise.
"One dwarf can't defend the bridge!" Wendt argued. "It's too wide! You need someone beside you!"
"Bring him up," said Kazakin. "He's right. Besides, he's as useless as an elf with the fuses. I'll come down."
As Grundi caught Halgrin's hand and pulled him over the balustrade, Laenfel galloped up on Wendt's horse.
"They are a half mile away," she said.
Kazakin chewed his white moustaches. "We've five more barrels to prime, and more matchcord to string." He glanced at Halgrin. "You may have to hold them for a bit."
"Good," said Halgrin, untying the rope from his waste. "I'm ready."
He picked up Olnir's hammer from where he'd set it, and marched toward the Ekrund end of the bridge. Behind him, Grundi began hauling up Wendt while Kazakin tied a rope around his waist and made ready to go down again.
"May Grimnir welcome you, slayer," he called.
Halgrin nodded, but didn't look around. Already the others were fading from his mind. All he could think of was the coming battle and the peace that would come with it. Images of Olnir’s spear-pierced body flashed through his head. Today Halgrin would take vengeance on Olnir's killer - not the miserable goblin who had thrust the spear through him, but the fool who had let the goblin into the dwarf camp in the first place, the fool who had fallen asleep on patrol, the fool who had broken Olnir's arm and cracked his skull in a stupid fight over nothing.
After a moment novitiate Wendt joined him and they stood together at the end of the bridge, waiting, as the wind sang around them.
"Another chance for glory, eh?" the young knight said. "My second knightly deed in the space of a day."
"I do not fight for glory," said Halgrin.
"No?" Wendt asked. "Then I have misunderstood. I thought we were the same, fighting for honor."
Halgrin shook his head. "You fight to win honor. I fight because I have lost it. I fight to right a wrong that can only be repaired with my death."
"Suicide?" said Wendt, shocked.
"No," said Halgrin. "Sacrifice. A meaningful death to make up for a meaningless life."
Wendt stared at him for a long moment. "Well, luck to you then, I suppose," he said.
"And to you," said Halgrin.
A cloud of dust appeared over the crest of the nearest hill, through which could be seen the dull glint of rusty armor and the hulking shapes of brutish bodies. Halgrin and Wendt readied themselves as they watched the orcs start down the near side of the hill. There seemed half as many as at the battle of the camp. Only seven big iron-clad orcs lumbered after Stinkfang, and a dozen or so milling, squabbling goblins. Still, they would be more than enough for one bare-chested dwarf armed with a mining hammer and a young knight in patched armor, both exhausted from manhandling heavy powder barrels underneath a windswept bridge.
"Two more barrels to be primed," called Grundi from behind them. "And one last cord to string. Kazakin says five minutes more!"
Halgrin wasn't sure he could hold the orcs for five seconds, but he would try.
"I will aid you with the four arrows I have left, warriors," came the high, clear voice of Laenfel. "But I regret that I cannot join you in battle. Someone must get the news back to Ekrund Fortress, whether the bridge falls or stands, and I am the swiftest."
"How dutiful she is," said Wendt, worshipfully.
"Typical elven cowardice," muttered Halgrin.
The knight glared at him, but if he spoke, his words were lost in the roar that rose from the orcs and goblins. The greenskins had finally seen them, and were storming down the last fifty paces of the track toward the bridge, shaking their choppers and spears.
Halgrin and Wendt hefted their weapons, all else forgotten. Halgrin wanted to face Stinkfang himself, but some of his lighter armored boys were getting out ahead of him, and it looked like they would close first. The goblins, craven little beasts that they were, jogged behind, waiting for the battle to be joined before they committed themselves.
Halgrin roared a challenge at an enormous orc with a face like a diseased pig. The monster roared back and turned his way, raising a huge chopper at him. But before the orc had taken another two steps, an arrow appeared in its forehead and it crashed down in front of Halgrin like a dead ox, skidding to a stop an inch from his boots.
"Thieving elf," Halgrin rasped, then leapt up on top of the fallen orc to face the one that charged in behind it, swinging an iron-shod club. Halgrin ducked it and smashed the orc’s knuckles as it swept past. The orc howled and dropped the club, and Halgrin flattened him with an overhead smash to the face. Then two more were on him and he was fighting to hold his ground.
Beside him, Wendt was doing the same. He parried an axe smash that nearly knocked him off his feet, then gutted another orc with a lightning thrust to the belly. A third orc fell screaming with an elven arrow in its eye.
A tiny spark of hope flared in Halgrin's chest. Four orcs down already. They might actually do it. They might actually hold them back. But then Stinkfang and the goblins entered the fray, and the spark died like it had fallen on snow.
The warboss stood head and shoulders above his boys, and was wider and thicker too - a huge, mad-eyed behemoth in scrap-yard armor, with an axe that looked to have been made from a fence-post and the blade of a plow. He shoved through the other orcs to the front of the fray and swung the unwieldy chopper at Wendt.
The knight jumped back and tripped over the body of the orc Laenfel had felled. Three goblins were on him before he could recover, and stabbed him in the neck and groin and armpit. He roared in pain and hacked two of them down, but then Stinkfang's axe came down and caved in his head and chest, turning them into pulp.
Halgrin nearly took a club to the back of the head as he stared. The young knight's death had been so sudden, and so inglorious. Of course Halgrin had expected them both to die here, but he had imagined a more fitting end for poor Wendt. He dodged the club at the last second, then shattered its wielder’s elbow with smash from his hammer.
Stinkfang shook the remains of Wendt off his plowshare axe and turned toward Halgrin. Two of Laenfel's arrows thudded into the warboss's filthy armor, but didn't pass through. He kept coming.
Halgrin swept around with his hammer, fanning back the swarming goblins, then charged. Stinkfang slammed down at him with his axe. Halgrin veered aside and the axe bit into the bridge, shaking it. He swung at Stinkfang's side, but his blow rang off the orc’s armor, stinging his hands.
A goblin sliced his shoulder with a spear. Another stabbed his leg. Halgrin swiped at them, driving them back, but more darted in. An orc with a red banner flapping over its ugly head swung a club at him. He barely blocked it. There were too many. He resigned himself to the fact that he was going to die the same inglorious death as Wendt had - brought low by lowly minions instead of facing the biggest and best.
Then a black shadow arced over his head and landed amongst the goblins, lashing out at them with a slim, silver blade. It was Laenfel.
"This is against my better judgement." she said, running the banner orc through. "But we must succeed. Look out!"
Halgrin turned, then dropped flat as Stinkfang's massive axe whooshed over his head. He rolled and swung at the warboss's ankle and won a roar of pain as the hammer smashed home.
Stinkfang hacked down at him again and he dodged. Laenfel cut down another goblin that would have run him through as Halgrin recovered.
"Fight the leader, slayer," said the elf, falling in behind him. "I will guard your flanks."
Halgrin nodded. The shadow warrior's strategy was sound, but he wasn't going to tell her that. He got in front of Stinkfang again, then shot a look back over his shoulder. Grundi and Zarri were pulling Kazakin up onto the bridge. The old engineer held the ends of half a dozen matchcords in his hand.
Stinkfang swung again. Halgrin leapt back, then tried to smash his hands, like he had with the other orc, but the warboss was too quick. His hammer struck only air, and he had to duck another backswing. Laenfel steadied him and chased off another goblin.
"The fuses are lit!" cried Kazakin from behind them. "To the cart! The fuses are lit!"
Halgrin's heart surged with joy. "Now," he growled. "Now I can die!"
He charged forward, swinging for Stinkfang's knees, and cracked one hard on the cap. The warboss roared and slashed at him. Halgrin spun aside and hit him in the thigh.
"Luck to you, slayer!" called Laenfel. "Die well!" And with a last stab at a passing goblin, she sprinted for the wagon.
A few scrambled after her. Halgrin let them go. The others could deal with them. It was Stinkfang he had to stop. If the warboss caught the wagon, none of them would make it off the bridge. He dodged another axe blow and blocked the warboss's path again as he heard the clatter of hooves and the rattle of cartwheels behind him.
"Not so fast, dung-breath," Halgrin growled.
A goblin shrilled gibberish to his right, and Stinkfang looked over. The little horror was pointing to one of the spitting fuses, which was crawling along the side of the bridge, woven through the balustrade. Halgrin took advantage of Stinkfang's distraction and smashed his jaw. The warboss stumbled back, roaring, and knocked Halgrin sideways with a backhand, then barked orders to the goblins.
Halgrin cursed. The scampering fiends were trying to put out the matchcords. He ducked away from Stinkfang and chased after them, knocking one off the bridge with a swipe, then crushing the skull of another.
Stinkfang came after him, slashing with his axe. Halgrin dove away, then rolled up to attack another goblin who was hacking at a fuse with a dagger. As he knocked it aside, the sputtering flame disappeared over the edge of the bridge, following the matchcord as it trailed down toward the barrels strapped to the supports.
On both sides of the bridge, goblins pointed over the side and shrieked with fear. Halgrin turned and saw Stinkfang stopping in mid-stride to look left and right.
"That's right, orc," Halgrin laughed, grinning savagely. "Whether you kill me or not,
you‘re dead. We will die together."
A glint of fear showed in the warboss's tiny red eyes, and with no warning he turned and ran for the Ekrund end of the bridge.
"No you don't!" shouted Halgrin, and sprinted after him.
He swept his hammer at Stinkfang's ankles and knocked his feet out from under him. The warboss went down with a crash of armor and lost his axe, then tried to scramble up again. Halgrin jumped on his back and struck at his head. With a clang, Stinkfang's heavy helmet spun away.
The huge orc rolled and snarled, grabbing behind him with one massive hand. Halgrin smashed his fingers with the hammer and he howled, but then caught Halgrin in both hands and held him over his head, making to throw him off the bridge. With a roar of rage, Halgrin swung down with all his strength and caved in Stinkfang's skull, spraying brains and gore all over, and snapping the haft of Olnir’s hammer in two.
Then, as if the blow had been a trigger, huge fiery explosions rocked either end of the bridge, shaking the whole world, and as Stinkfang toppled backwards, Halgrin still clutched in his dead hands, the bridge fell with him.
Halgrin watched in vertiginous wonder as the two ends of the bridge sheared off in a cloud of flying debris while the center dropped toward the raging torrent below, turning slowly but remaining intact. As he fell, he looked toward the far end to see if Kazakin and the others had gotten away before the blast, but just then a piece of masonry struck him on the forehead and the world went dim.
The last thing he felt as the blackness engulfed him was a horrendous impact, and the cold embrace of water.
***
In the endless night of death, something struck him on the cheek.
"Wake up, slayer," someone said.
Halgrin frowned. Did Grimnir slap the new arrivals to his hall? Was it some sort of initiation?
"One of you sit on his back and pump the water out of him," said the voice again.
Halgrin's frown deepened. That didn't sound like anything he expected Grimnir to say.
Someone turned him on to his chest and a heavy weight was dropped on his back. He coughed and heaved, and a stream of water spewed painfully from his mouth. The pain made him blink and then open his eyes.
"He's alive after all," said a cold female voice. "You dwarfs are hearty folk."
Calloused hands rolled him back over and helped him sit up. He looked around. He was on a muddy bank of a river. Orc and goblin bodies floated by in the current. Some had washed up on the shore. Kazakin squatted down in front of him, smiling.
"Good work, laddie," he said. "You killed Stinkfang, and kept those little green menaces from snuffing out my fuses."
"We saw that final blow," said Grundi, grinning from behind Kazakin. "Well struck."
"Aye," said Zarri, joining him. "We've decided to dub you Shatterskull because of it. Halgrin Shatterskull. Has a nice ring to it."
Halgrin groaned and hung his head. This was the worst thing that could have happened. He was supposed to have died. Now he would have to try and kill himself all over again. What a paradox Grimnir had set for his chosen. A slayer could not simply lower his hammer in the middle of a melee and let himself be killed. The god would not accept into his halls he who had not tried his hardest. A slayer had to fight to the best of his abilities, and yet if he did - and if he won and lived, then really he had failed, and would have to suffer the agony of his shame until he could find another foe that might be able to give him the death he craved.
"I don't want a name," Halgrin said at last. "I want to meet my doom."
Kazakin chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry, lad,” he said. “There's always tomorrow."
THE END
Halgrin Gustagsson gently probed his black eye with a stubby finger, then stuck the finger in his mouth and waggled his loose tooth. He had to admit that Olnir Ironhall threw a respectable right cross, and not a bad left hook either. He started through the woods again, continuing his patrol. If his old friend had been there with him he would have complimented him on his strength, but Olnir was flat on his back in old Borek the bone-setter’s tent with a broken right arm and a fractured skull.
That had been an accident, and Halgrin was as sorry as anybody about it. Olnir had put a foot wrong earlier that night, as the two of them had slugged it out by the steep bank of the river where Thane Redhelm’s company had made camp, and he had fallen hard on some rocks that jutted from the swift flowing current.
He and Olnir had volunteered to leave Ekrund Fortress with Redhelm’s rangers seven days ago, when word had come that orc Big Boss Luggo Raspgob was marching up from the Badlands with five thousand orcs, ready to help Gazbag and the Bloody Sun Boyz drive the dwarfs out of the Dragonback Mountains once and for all. The only thing that stood in Luggo’s way was Knifewind Gorge, a deep canyon with a raging mill race of a river at the bottom that could sweep away five thousand orcs in an eyeblink, and the only way to cross that river was Knifewind Bridge.
That was why Thane Redhelm and his company were sneaking deep into orc-held territory with a wagon filled with specially crafted barrels of naphtha-laced blackpowder. If they succeeded in blowing up the bridge, Luggo was stopped. If they failed, Ekrund and the Dragonback Mountains might be lost forever.
Halgrin stopped and peered into the dense forest, stroking his thick brown beard and listening to the sounds of the night. There seemed nothing amiss. He yawned and stumped on, cursing the drowsiness that threatened to overwhelm him. He and Olnir had shared the last watch since the mission had begun, patrolling the perimeter of the dwarf camp together, and Olnir’s constant grumbling and bickering had helped keep Halgrin awake. Now, without Olnir at his side, griping on about the rain and the cold, patrol was a lonely, boring chore.
Olnir had been his best friend since they were beardlings. They had been born of the same clan, grew up in the same hold, and had apprenticed at the same forge, and when word had come from High King Thorgrim Grudgebearer that the greenskins were mustering in Ekrund and all able-bodied dwarfs were needed to stand against the tide, they had traveled together to Ekrund Fortress and volunteered to fight and die in defense of their land and their people. But though the two friends came from similar circumstances, they were as different as night and day.
Halgrin always saw the light side of things. Even in the worst of circumstances he could find something to joke about, or some reason to hope. Black-bearded Olnir was the exact opposite. Even in the best of times he could find something to complain about, and some reason why he was sure it would all go sour before long. These opposing views of the world had been the source of all their arguments, and this wasn’t the first that had ended in fisticuffs, but it was the first where of them had been so badly wounded that they had to see the bone-setter.
Halgrin paused again to peer around and listen to the night. All quiet. He sighed and sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, then drew out his pipe and filled it. A smoke would calm his mind. He lit the pipe and took a deep draw, flashing back to the argument that had led to the fight. Strangely, it hadn’t been one of their usual rows. Instead, it had stemmed from a part of Halgrin that he liked much less than his generally sunny disposition – his pig-headed stubbornness and greed.
***
It had been after a long day’s march that it started. Thane Redhelm’s dwarfs had made camp between a thick stand of trees and the deep cut of a swift running river, and were sitting down to a meal of rabbit and trail bread and hearty dwarf ale, when Olnir had started complaining that Halgrin was being selfish.
“You already have an ancestor weapon,” Olnir said, filling his mug from the keg on the back of the supply wagon. “What will you do with another one?”
“I will wield them both,” laughed Halgrin, thumping his chest with his fist. “One in each hand, like a hero from the great days of yore!”
“You’ll cut off your own foot, is what you’ll do,” said Olnir dryly.
The other dwarfs around the fire chuckled at that. Even Thane Redhelm smiled.
Olnir drew his hammer from his belt and held it out. “Look, Halgrin. Look what I fight with. A mining hammer. It isn’t even a proper weapon. Now that you have two good axes, why can’t you lend me your new one?”
Halgrin frowned, uncomfortable, thinking back to the night, two days out from Ekrund Fortress, when Thane Redhelm’s rangers had stumbled upon a dwarf patrol led by the fabled Alethewn Stoutgut, who were getting trounced by a gang of Bloody Sun orcs that outnumbered them five to one. “You know I can’t do that. It was given to me by the great Stoutgut himself, for rescuing him and his lads from those greenskin scum.”
Olnir rolled his eyes. “We were all there, Halgrin,” he said. “And we all saved him. It’s where I broke my good hammer.”
“Aye,” Halgrin agreed. “But it was I who stopped that choppa from cutting off Alethewn’s head. He gave the axe to me. It would be disrespectful to give away such a gift.”
“Fine, then!” snapped Olnir, throwing up his hands. “Keep it! Give me the other one instead!”
Halgrin stiffened and stared at him. “Give you the axe of my grandfather’s grandfather? The axe that slew the great dragon Lattirjarn? The axe that my father said should be held in no hands but mine? Never!”
Olnir sighed. “All right, Gustagsson. I give up.” He shook his head in disgust. “By Grungni, I believe if you had seven axes, you would crawl on your hands and knees before admitting they were too heavy.”
The dwarfs around the fire laughed at that, but Halgrin only snorted.
“The trouble with you, Olnir Ironhall,” he said, taking a sip of his ale and gesturing with his mug. “Is you’re so convinced that the world is a terrible, unfair place, that, for you, it is. If you go around snarling at the world, the world snarls back.” He grinned, smug. “If you were to face the world with a smile and a kind word, the world would return the favor, and axes might start coming your way.”
It was then that fists began to fly.
***
Halgrin woke with a start and blinked around, for a moment completely lost. Then memory returned and his heart lurched. He had fallen asleep on patrol! He jumped up, hands dropping to his axes. How long had he slept? Had anyone noticed? And what had woken him up?
A movement out of the corner of his eye brought his head around. A little hunched shadow was moving through the trees, and there was another beyond it. Goblins! And they were creeping toward the camp! A heavy footfall thudded to his right. An orc. No. Three orcs! Halgrin drew his axes and sucked in a breath to shout a warning to his comrades, but before he could make a sound, a dwarfish bellow of surprise and rage echoed through the woods, followed by the clash of steel and savage orc roaring.
Halgrin launched himself forward and pounded through the trees, as all around him the orcs and goblins did the same. A goblin saw him and angled his way, shrilling and raising its crude spear. Halgrin smashed its face in with a backhand and ran on, dread dragging at his guts like a lead brick. He had fallen asleep! He had let the greenskins past his position! He had endangered the camp!
A running orc charged toward him. Halgrin stopped short and veered, getting behind it, then cut it down with a swift one-two. The sounds of battle grew louder as he leapt its body, and he called to the ancestor god Grungni that the dwarfs had had some other warning, or that there were only a few greenskins.
But as he burst from the trees into the clearing by the river he saw his calls had gone unanswered. A full score of orcs were raging through the camp, smashing and killing, while a seething carpet of goblins swirled around their legs, waving spears and curved daggers. Half-dressed dwarfs fought desperate battles before every tent, and more lay hacked to pieces on the ground before the fire.
Faril, one of the rangers, gutted an orc and roared defiance at three more. Gammir the thunderer blew a goblin’s head off, only to be stabbed in the back by another. He fell screaming into the fire. Guarding the cart that carried the barrels of blackpowder, Thane Redhelm, bare to the waist, fought a towering, mad-eyed, iron-clad orc who wielded two blood-crusted cleavers each as long as a manling was tall. Halgrin recognized the bellowing monster as Warboss Rotmung Stinkfang, so named for the decaying green tusks that jutted up on either side of his coal scuttle mouth. He and his boys had been harassing dwarf scouting parties all across the Dragonback Mountains for weeks, softening the ground for the coming of Big Boss Luggo Raspgob’s mighty waaagh.
To the thane’s left, Borek the bone setter defended his tent with an axe and a surgeon’s saw, trying to fight off a big orc and a throng of goblins. Halgrin cursed and ran to help. Olnir was in that tent, and defenseless – all because of their foolish fight. He had to protect him.
Halgrin smashed into the backs of the goblins, severing spines and heads with his two magnificent axes. The rest of the puny greenskins turned, shrieking and stabbing, while the orc continued to press Borek back toward the tent. Halgrin shattered goblin spear hafts and bashed their daggers from their hands, but the unaccustomed weight of his second axe threw his balance off and he stumbled into a rusty blade, taking a cut over his eye.
Beyond the goblins, the orc kicked Borek to the ground, then crushed his skull with an enormous spiked club and started for the tent.
“No!” cried Halgrin.
He hacked through the goblins and charged the orc’s back, swinging for its spine, but once again the weight of his weapons threw him off and he only gashed its hip. The massive monster turned, roaring with pain and anger, and swung at him with the club.
Halgrin ducked, then buried his grandfather’s axe in the side of the orc’s neck. It howled, dark red blood spraying from the terrible wound, and lashed out as it died. Its club caught Halgrin on the top of his helm and he went down, sparks exploding behind his eyes and the world going black. The last thing he saw before the dark waters of unconsciousness closed over him was the remaining goblins swarming through the door flap of Borek’s tent and shrilling with glee.
***
When he woke again, Halgrin wondered if he’d been buried alive. It was dark, and there was a crushing weight on his chest, and a smell in his nose so foul he thought he must be in a mass grave. Then his vision cleared and he found himself face to face with a dead orc. That accounted for the smell, and the orc lay on top of him, which accounted for the weight. He turned his head to try and see out from under the enormous carcass, then had to close his eyes to keep from vomiting. His brain felt loose inside his skull, like a cannonball rolling around in a tin bucket.
After a moment he mastered his nausea and opened his eyes to a scene of ruin and death. All over the campsite, a cold pre-dawn rain beat down on dead and dismembered dwarfs and greenskins, and sizzled on the embers of a fire-blackened tent. He wondered for a moment if the dwarfs had by some miracle won the battle, for he could hear no orc grunting, nor any goblin gibbering, but then he saw Thane Redhelm lying dead in the middle of a ring of butchered greenskins and knew they had not. Were any dwarfs alive, they would not have left their leader’s body lying in the mud like a dead dog.
Halgrin slowly worked his way out from under the orc, then dragged his axes out after him. As he waited for another wave of nausea to pass he saw that he was the only one still armed. Dwarf and orc alike had been stripped of armor, weapons and gold. The supply wagon and the wagon carrying the blackpowder barrels had been taken too. Stinkfang’s band had killed and looted and moved on. Halgrin, hidden under the fallen orc, was the only dwarf they had missed.
That thought sparked another and he looked up, turning his head toward Borek’s tent. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one alive. Perhaps the goblins had seen Olnir lying in his cot and thought him dead already. Halgrin pushed to his feet, then swayed unsteadily as the world spun around him. When he recovered, he picked up his weapons and crept toward the tent, then pushed aside the flap with the head of his grandfather’s axe.
“Olnir?” he whispered. “Do you live?”
There was no answer from within. He edged forward and ducked inside. Three dead goblins lay on the floor of the dark tent, their heads caved in, and for a moment a candle of hope kindled in Halgrin’s chest, but then he saw a larger shape near the tent’s back wall and the flame guttered and died. It was Olnir, lying on his back with a snapped off goblin spear through his heart, and his old mining hammer hanging from his limp left hand, while his broken right arm hung useless in a sling at his side.
Halgrin sank to his knees before his dead friend, dropping his axes and lowering his head to his chest. “I did this,” he said. “All of it. It’s all my fault.”
A sob escaped him. Everything that had happened that night could be traced back to his greed and stubbornness. Had he done what anyone else would have done and lent Olnir one of his axes, they would not have had their fight, and if they hadn’t had their fight, Olnir wouldn’t have cracked his skull and broken his arm, and if Olnir hadn’t cracked his skull and broken his arm, he would have been on patrol with Halgrin, and Halgrin wouldn’t have fallen asleep and let the orcs past his position to slaughter the camp.
With a cry of self-hatred, Halgrin snatched his dagger from his belt and pushed it through his thick brown beard to his throat. It was a cruel joke that he who had killed all the others through his foolishness still lived. Well, he would fix that. He would make the massacre of Thane Redhelm’s company complete.
Then he paused.
No. Suicide was a coward’s death, a shameful death. He had already shamed himself enough. There was a better way to die, a way to give his death meaning, and to restore his honor.
He moved the dagger away from his neck and raised it to his head. With his other hand he grabbed a lock of his long hair and pulled it taut, then cut it off at the roots.
Hadir Titankiller - January 9, 2010 03:15 AM (GMT)
Chapter Two
Halgrin scraped the last stubble from his scalp with his dagger, then wiped the hair and blood from the blade and put it away. He had shaved himself bald except for a narrow crest of hair like a coxcomb. Now he stripped to the waist and lowered his head. He didn’t know the words of the Slayer’s Oath, for he had never considered becoming one. Hopefully the god would accept his imperfect vow in the spirit in which it was given.
“Grimnir, father of valor,” he said. “For my shame and the wrongs I have done, I vow to you that I will die in battle, facing the mightiest creatures I can find. I hope, through my death, to redeem myself in your eyes, and that you will find me worthy to enter your halls.”
The pledge said, he rose and picked up his great-grandfather’s axe and the axe that Alethewn Stoutgut had given him, ready to seek his doom, but then he looked at the weapons. A vision came to him. He stood on a mountain of the slain, an axe in each hand. It was glorious, but it was wrong. These axes were the symbols of the pride that had caused the deaths of Olnir Ironhall and all his other companions. They were reminders of his shame. He would not carry them.
He looked at Olnir, still laying where the goblins had killed him, his simple mining hammer hanging from his slack hand, and knew what he must do.
***
As the rain beat upon his shoulders, Halgrin cut into the cold hard earth in front of the tent with his great-grandfather’s axe until the blade was dull, then switched to Alethewn’s axe and did the same, carving out a hole long enough and wide enough for a dwarf to lie in.
When it was shoulder deep, he heard voices approaching the camp, and crouched down. Had the orcs returned? No, it was dwarfs he heard.
“Dead,” said one. “All dead.”
“The dirty, green-skinned savages,” said another.
“How did this happen?” asked a third.
Halgrin recognized the voices - Grundi Dabirsson and Zarri Brugalsson, Ironbreakers from Karak Hirn, and the old engineer, Kazakin Forgeborn. They had all been part of Thane Redhelm’s company. He stood and pushed himself out of the grave.
“It was me,” he said. “I fell asleep on watch. I let them past me.”
The dwarfs stared at him, shocked to see him. All three were bruised and cut and muddy. Kazakin, the white-bearded engineer, used his blunderbuss as a crutch.
“You survived,” Halgrin said. “How did you escape?”
“Orcs knocked us into the river,” said Kazakin. “The current swept us off. Took all this time to walk back.” He nodded at Halgrin’s naked scalp. “You’ve shaved your head.”
Halgrin touched it self-consciously. “I’ve taken the oath for what I’ve done. I will die in battle.”
Grundi, half a head taller than Halgrin, and bulging with muscles, pulled his hammer from his back. “Aye, you will,” he growled through his red beard. “Here and now.”
Zarri nodded and drew his axe, his black brows lowering. “You don’t deserve a slayer’s doom.”
“Now, lads,” said Kazakin. “No dwarf may come between a slayer and his oath to Grimnir.”
“Grimnir wouldn’t have him,” sneered Grundi.
“Grimnir will have anybody,” said Kazakin. “Besides, he’s more useful alive than dead. We’ll need him to finish the job.”
“Finish the job?” said Grundi, turning to stare at the Engineer. “And how do we do that? There’s only four of us, and Stinkfang’s boys have stolen the powder.”
“Probably taking it to Luggo as we speak,” said Zarri, then laughed. “We should let him. He might blow himself up and save us the trouble.”
Kazakin shook his head. “We cannot rely on such a slim chance. We must get the powder back and bring it to the bridge.”
“But how?” asked Grundi. “How are four of us going to get a wagonload of powder away from a horde of orcs and goblins.”
Kazakin turned to Halgrin, his eyes as cold. “Our slayer will get it for us,” he said. “Or die trying.”
***
Halgrin lowered Olnir’s body into the grave, then crossed the two beautiful old axes over his dead friend’s chest.
“May Grungni welcome you into his halls, Olnir Ironhall,” he said, bowing his head.
While the others gathered what few supplies they could from the ransacked campsite, Halgrin filled the hole, then picked up Olnir’s old mining hammer. He held it over the mound of earth. “On your grave I swear, brother. As recompense for the greed that claimed your life, this simple hammer will be my only weapon until I find my doom.”
***
Halgrin lay at the top of a low ridge with Grundi, Zarri and old Kazakin, looking down at the greenskin camp in the valley below them. It was twilight on the night after the massacre of Redhelm’s Rangers. They had tracked the orcs all day, and caught up to them here, a wasteland of rock-strewn hills only an hour or two north of Knifewind Gorge.
“That’s a relief,” said Kazakin, pointing a finger. “They have the powder wagon, and they’ve managed not to blow themselves up yet.”
“Aye,” said Grundi. “But they haven’t made it easy to steal, have they?”
Halgrin saw what he meant. The orcs had raised their tents beside a scrubby woods, and left the powder wagon very close to the trees, with the ponies hobbled. To rescue the wagon, the dwarfs would have to drive it through the whole of the camp, and Halgrin counted at least fifteen big orcs eating around the fire, and more than twice that many goblins scurrying amongst them.
“We’ll have to come at it through the woods,” said Kazakin, chewing his white moustaches. “And then ride like the wind.”
“We’ll never make it,” said Zarri. “They’ll be on us before we turn the ponies.”
Kazakin smiled. “That’s where our slayer comes in.” He said. “He’s going to go down to one side and kill as many orcs and make as much noise as possible, isn’t he?”
Halgrin nodded. “Aye. I will.”
“As long as you don’t fall asleep,” sneered Grundi.
“No more of that,” said Kazakin, as Halgrin balled his fists. “Save it for the greenskins.” He edged back from the ridge. “We wait until moonset, when more of them will be asleep, then--”
He was interrupted by a thunder of hoofs coming up behind. Halgrin and the others turned, then dove left and right as a huge warhorse galloped through them, heading over the hill toward the orc camp. A man in a patched tunic and dented armor leaned forward in the saddle, sword and shield at the ready.
“Hoy!” barked Grundi. “Watch your flanks!”
“Stop, you fool!” hissed Kazakin in a harsh whisper. “Come back!”
The rider looked back as he crested the ridge, then pulled up and wheeled around, surprised. “Your pardon, noble dwarfs,” he said, trotting back. “I did not see you.”
“That’s obvious,” grunted Zarri.
“Who are you?” asked Kazakin. “And what do you think you’re doing?”
The rider, a tall young human with keen blue eyes in a guileless face, pointed back over his shoulder with his sword. “My name is Burgard Wendt, knight novitiate of the Order of the Blazing Sun, and I go to challenge the leader of those savages to single combat.”
“Are you mad?” Grundi laughed. “Old Stinkfang won’t give you single combat.”
“Aye,” agreed Zarri. “His boys’ll have you in the stewpot before you can so much as throw down your gauntlet.”
Wendt frowned. “There is no honor to be won in that.”
Grundi and Zarri rolled their eyes at each other, but Kazakin stepped forward.
“You seek honor, knight?”
“Indeed,” said Wendt. “I have sworn upon the altar of Myrmidia that I shall perform three knightly deeds ere I return to my chapterhouse to take my vows.”
“I’ve got just the thing for you,” said Kazakin. “As knightly a deed as you could wish.”
Wendt beamed. “I would be most obliged to you, dwarf. Tell me what I must do.”
Halgrin glared at the knight as Kazakin and the others led him away from the orc camp, explaining about the wagon and the powder and the bridge. He knew what Kazakin was going to suggest to Wendt, and he didn’t like it. He was seeking his doom. He didn’t need any help. The foolish manling would only get in the way.
***
“Right,” said Kazakin, five hours later. “Here it is.”
They were back at the top of the slope, looking down once again at the orc camp. The moons had sunk below the western hills a short while ago, and only starlight and the low glow of the greenskins’ sunken fire illuminated the scene.
Kazakin pointed at Halgrin and Wendt. “You two go down behind the tents and wait for the signal. When you hear it, start a ruckus. Once you’ve got their attention, we go for the wagon and ride it out as quick as we can.”
“Good,” said Wendt. “And where shall we meet afterwards?”
The dwarfs blinked at him.
“There will be no afterwards,” said Halgrin. “Not for us.”
Wendt’s smile faded. “It seems I will not live to perform my three knightly deeds, then.”
“You will help stop the advance of five thousand greenskins,” said Kazakin. “And save countless lives from slaughter. That is three deeds in one.”
Wendt hesitated, then nodded. “Aye. It is great sacrifice for a noble cause. Very well. In Myrmidia’s name I will do it.”
“Good,” said Kazakin. “Then let’s get to business--“
A female voice interrupted him. “Are you dwarfs of Thane Redhelm’s rangers?”
Halgrin and the others started and looked around. Out of the shadows stepped a slim figure in black, a longbow on her back, tugging down a black scarf to reveal the almond-shaped eyes and sharp-boned features of an elf. Halgrin thought he had never seen a woman so ugly. Wendt, however, stared at her with the glazed look of a bull struck between the eyes with a sledgehammer.
“We are Redhelm’s dwarfs, elf,” said Kazakin, warily. “Who are you?”
“I am Laenfel Silverswift, a scout for Ekrund Fortress,” she said. “Come from the south after spying out the greenskin horde. Why does Knifewind Bridge still stand? I expected to find it destroyed. And where are the rest of your company?”
Halgrin bristled at her preemptory tone. The others did too - all but Wendt, who still made cow eyes at her.
“We’re it,” said Grundi, turning a hard eye on Halgrin. “The rest were killed by orcs, in their sleep.”
“And the powder to blow the bridge is with them,” said Kazakin, pointing over the hill. “We won’t be able to finish the job until we get it back.”
The elf woman stared. “You are going to attack the orcs? Just the five of you?”
“Don’t have much choice, do we?” growled Grundi.
“It will be a great sacrifice, lady,” said Wendt. “A noble deed done to save thousands.”
Laenfel looked north over her shoulder, ignoring him. “I am due to report the greenskin numbers and disposition to Rogrum at Ekrund as soon as possible. I was to let nothing turn me from my path.”
The dwarfs looked at each other, not liking where this was going.
“Better go then, eh?” said Zarri, hopefully.
“But the bridge must fall,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. “You cannot be allowed to fail.” She turned back to them, her face set and grim. “I will stay with you.”
“We wouldn’t want you to put yourself out,” said Kazakin.
“Shouldn’t go against orders,” grunted Grundi.
“I thank you for concern, friends,” said Laenfel. “But I must risk it. I will fight by your side until the bridge falls.”
“You honor us with your presence, lady,” said Wendt.
Halgrin and the others moaned.
She squatted down among them. “Now,” she said. “What are your plans?”
Kazakin sighed. “Right,” he said. “Here it is.”
***
A short while later, Halgrin and Wendt crawled on their elbows toward the greenskin tents. The camp was quiet now but for the rattle of orcish snoring and the shifting of the few goblin guards who huddled around the dying fire.
“How noble Lady Laenfel is,” murmured Wendt. “To risk her life and mission to help us. Truly, I have never met a more beautiful, honorable--“
“Stow it,” grunted Halgrin. “Do you want them to hear us?” Why were humans so fascinated with elves?
Wendt looked up toward the camp, then shrank down again. “My apologies,” he whispered. “I was overcome by admiration for--“
“Shhh!”
Wendt grunted, but fell silent at last.
They reached the back of a filthy tent. Halgrin rose to a crouch and readied his hammer as Wendt drew his sword. Now they must wait for Kazakin’s signal, which would tell them the others were in position.
Halgrin smiled grimly. It would be a fitting revenge to do to the greenskins what they had done to Thane Redhelm and his company - to fall upon them and kill them in their sleep. Of course, the orcs and goblins weren’t the ones who were truly responsible for the massacre of the dwarfs, but tonight Halgrin would lay that villain low as well. That contemptible fool, Halgrin Gustagsson, would meet his end here, and at last make amends for his negligence and incompetence, for his stubbornness and greed. He couldn’t wait to begin.
The signal came – the harsh call of a mountain hawk. Halgrin’s heart thudded. He stood. Wendt joined him, murmuring a short prayer to Myrmidia.
“Knight,” said Halgrin. “Make a door.”
“Aye,” said Wendt.
The novitiate slashed through the tent’s leather wall with a single stroke. Halgrin slipped silently through the cut and looked around. Three orcs slept within. Halgrin raised Olnir’s hammer and crushed the nearest’s skull before it could open its eyes. A second grunted quizzically, and Halgrin smashed its face in with a back swing. The third struggled up, groping for its cleaver, but Wendt jumped in and ran it through the neck. It sank back in a fountain of blood. Halgrin nodded. Three dead without a sound. But the time for stealth was now past.
“Ready, knight?” he asked.
Wendt nodded grimly.
They stepped together to the door flap, took a deep breath, then charged out of the tent into the firelight, roaring at the top of their lungs.
“For Redhelm and Ekrund!” bellowed Halgrin.
“For Myrmidia and the Empire!” shouted Wendt.
The carpet of goblins that slept around the fire leapt up, shrilling in surprise as they grabbed their spears and daggers. But Halgrin and Wendt were already amongst them, bashing heads and chopping through chests and arms. Half a dozen died in seconds, and more ran screaming for the shadows.
The rest recovered quickly, however, and the next moment Halgrin and the novitiate knight were fighting for their lives, while questioning grumbles came from the surrounding tents.
“Come out, you green cowards!” cried Halgrin. “Come meet your doom!”
Sleepy orcish heads poked out of tents and blinked around to see what the noise was about, then roared and burst out, charging toward Halgrin and Wendt, axes and cleavers held high. Halgrin shot a glance toward the powder wagon as they came, and was relieved to see Kazakin cutting the ponies’ hobbles while Grundi climbed onto barrels in the back and Zarri took a seat on the driver’s bench and flicked the reins.
Then a huge orc blocked the view, slashing with a massive cleaver. Halgrin jumped aside and the heavy blade chopped a goblin in two. Another orc loomed on his left, swinging a club. Halgrin ducked and struck back. Beside him, Wendt reeled as an axe blade glanced off his pauldron. A goblin gashed him with a dagger as he recovered.
Halgrin cursed. He was ready to die, but he would feel better about going to Grimnir’s halls if he knew the others had rescued the powder wagon first.
Another orc pushed in, swinging an axe. Halgrin blocked it and dodged the club of the second, but the first orc’s cleaver was coming straight at him. He wouldn’t escape it.
An elvish arrow sprouted from the cleaver orc’s eye. It stumbled, bellowing, and the axe veered to the side. Halgrin took advantage and smashed the orc’s kneecap. It fell into a cluster of goblins. Another arrow thwacked into the neck of the orc with the club. Wendt’s foes were similarly pierced, and the knight cut them down as they howled and scrabbled at their faces and chests.
Halgrin was reluctant to thank an elf for anything, but in this case, he had to admit Laenfel had saved their mission. The wagon was still weaving through the campsite and had not picked up any speed. If the orcs killed Halgrin and Wendt just then, they would have turned and seen it.
Then, they did see it. As Halgrin and Wendt faced another wave of greenskins, Stinkfang’s ugly, broken-tusked head pushed out of the biggest tent and looked around. Halgrin shouted a challenge to draw his attention, but it was no good. The warboss spotted the retreating wagon. He roared and pointed after it.
The orcs and goblins looked behind them, and Halgrin and Wendt made them pay for it, chopping and smashing at the nearest, but the rest broke away and ran for the wagon.
“After them, knight!” called Halgrin.
He and Wendt chased the greenskins, hacking down stragglers as Laenfel’s arrows whistled overhead and dropped a few more. Beyond the mob, Halgrin saw Zarri crack his whip over the ponies’ heads. The wagon picked up speed, rumbling for the edge of the camp, but then, disaster!
As it steered around the last tent, the back right wheel struck a hidden boulder. The wagon stopped dead, the ponies rearing and squealing as the dwarfs flew forward. The wheel was dwarf-built, so it didn’t shatter as a human wheel would have, but the cart was stuck, and the greenskins were closing fast.
“Come on, knight!” Halgrin rasped. “Hurry!”
At the wagon, the dwarfs recovered. Kazakin knelt on the bench and blasted a muzzle-load of gravel at the oncoming mob while Grundi and Zarri stood on the barrels, readying their axes.
The Goblins swarmed in first, climbing the wagon while the ironbreakers hacked at them and Kazakin bashed around with his blunderbuss. Then the orcs hit. The first nearly swept Grundi and Zarri off with one sweep of its axe, but they leapt the blade and chopped him down.
“Straight through!” Halgrin called to Wendt.
They slammed into the greenskins, scattering goblins and smashing orc spines and legs, but Halgrin didn’t slow to fight. As the orcs fell, he bulled through to the wagon with Wendt right behind.
“Kazakin! Whip up the ponies!” cried Halgrin, and ducked below the wagon’s bed to put his shoulder to the axle. “Come on, manling! Push!”
“Pushing wagons isn’t knight’s work,” said Wendt, as he helped Grundi and Zarri hold off the greenskins. “I must fight!”
“It’s hero’s work, curse you!” barked Grundi.
“Get under!” snapped Zarri. “We’ll hold them!”
“Very well,” said the novitiate reluctantly, then crawled in beside Halgrin as clash of battle rang above them.
Kazakin’s whip cracked and the wagon edged ahead as the ponies strained. Halgrin and Wendt heaved, and the blocked wheel ground against the boulder, rising toward the top, but then stopped and sank back.
“Again, Kazakin!” called Halgrin.
More whip cracks, and the wagon inched forward.
“Together,” gritted Halgrin, and he and Wendt pushed with all their might.
Again, the wheel rose up the sloping side of the boulder, but this time it crested the top, then all at once dropped down the other side.
The dwarfs cheered, but as the wagon bounced forward, Halgrin and Wendt were exposed and prone, with greenskins all around. Halgrin rolled aside as an enormous axe chopped down at him. He swept around with his hammer and hauled Wendt up, jerking him back from a goblin’s spear thrust. They backed after the wagon, keeping themselves between it and the greenskins.
Wendt grinned. “Now this will be hero’s work,” he said.
“Not for you,” said Halgrin, shoving him toward the tailgate. “You have two more knightly deeds to perform, remember?”
“But--“ said Wendt.
Grundi grabbed him by the collar and hauled him aboard, cutting him off.
“Sorry, manling,” said Halgrin. “This is my doom, and mine alone.”
He raised Olnir’s mining hammer and shook it at the oncoming orcs. “Come on, you filthy green pigs!” he roared. “Come die with me!”
Hadir Titankiller - January 9, 2010 03:36 AM (GMT)
Chapter Three
The orcs and goblins charged toward Halgrin, roaring and squealing, as the powder cart trundled quickly away behind him. He braced for the impact, bellowing his defiance, but just as the first orc swung its rusty cleaver at him, something dropped down over his arm and head from behind, then pulled tight and jerked him off his feet.
Halgrin squawked with surprise and outrage as he was dragged across the rough ground on his back, shredding his naked skin. He looked down and saw a rope pulled tight across his chest and under his right arm.
The orcs and goblins ran after him, chopping and stabbing at his flailing feet, but they couldn't catch up. He was bumping along too fast. Their attacks did nothing but dig up dirt and grass. Halgrin twisted his head around and saw that the rope was attached to a corner post on the back of the powder cart, and that Grundi and Zarri were reeling it in and looping it around the post as they rumbled along.
"You bastards!" roared Halgrin, spitting out dust and pebbles. "What have you done?"
The two dwarfs just laughed and kept pulling as the slim figure of Laenfel galloped out of the night on Wendt's warhorse and pulled up alongside Halgrin. "Your kinsmen have saved your life, dwarf. Are you that mad, that you would be ungrateful?"
"They have robbed me of my doom!"
"Dwarfs are mad." The elf shook her head and kicked the horse ahead to pace the cart.
After another quarter mile of lacerations and stabbing rocks, Grundi and Zarri finally reeled Halgrin up to the back of the cart, then hauled him over the tailgate.
Halgrin glared at Grundi and Zarri as he lay panting against the stack of powder barrels. "You are both in my book," he gasped. "No dwarf may interfere with a slayer's doom!"
Grundi grinned at him. "We only postponed it, laddie. You don't deserve so quick an end, after what you did."
Zarri laughed. "Ha! Maybe you should miss a doom for each of the deaths you caused. That would be fitting!"
Halgrin surged up, swinging his fist at Zarri's sneering mouth, but the cart bounced over a bit of rough ground and he fell against Wendt instead.
"Easy, lad," called old Kazakin from the driver's bench. "They’ve done you wrong, I'll admit, but you'll have many more chances to find your doom before this war is done. There's always tomorrow."
Halgrin pushed himself upright with Wendt's help and glared at Grundi and Zarri. "It can't come soon enough."
***
They reached Knifewind Bridge just as dawn was breaking. The other dwarfs were relieved to see that it was empty of greenskins. But Halgrin was conflicted. His longing for a good doom made him almost disappointed that Big Boss Luggo's Waaagh! had not yet reached the span. Charging five thousand orcs and goblins would be an epic doom indeed. At the same time, if Luggo's army had been there, it would mean that they had failed, and all of Ekrund would suffer under the greenskin incursion. It seemed that being a slayer could be a selfish vocation if one wasn't careful.
A better hope for a doom was Stinkfang's boys. The warboss and his mob had fallen out of sight behind the wagon after only a quarter hour or so, and Halgrin guessed they were maybe an hour behind at the most, but Kazakin had said that it would take all of an hour and maybe more to set the specially prepared black powder barrels and attach the fuses so they could blow up the bridge.
"It isn't some human ruin," the engineer had said. "That bridge was built by dwarfs to withstand earthquakes, storms and bombardments. The charges are going to have to be placed just so to bring it down."
So Halgrin put aside his grudge against Grundi and Zarri and worked with them, novitiate Wendt, and the old engineer, while the elf woman - who none of them trusted to be able to tie a knot, let alone set a fuse - watched for Stinkfang's approach from a rise near the Ekrund end of the bridge. She had a hunter's horn with her, and would sound it when the warband came in sight.
The bridge itself was nearly Halgrin's doom more than once. It was a narrow span, only just wide enough for two carts to pass each other, and about fifty paces long, but it was suspended high above the Icewind River, which thundered below them while the wind that gave the river and the bridge its name buffeted them mercilessly, numbing their hands and stiffening their joints as they lowered themselves down to the understructure to place the barrels, and threatening to blow them off every moment.
A single stone arch supported the bridge, bearing all its weight and pressing it into the walls of the gorge. The powder barrels had to be placed where the arch met the walls on either side of the river, and then bound there so the force of the blast would break the stone. This meant a lot of dangling over the abyss at the ends of ropes, and balancing precariously on slanting slabs of stone made slippery with the spray of the river and centuries of lichen growth.
Halgrin slipped several times. Once he was wrestling a lowered barrel into the wedge-shaped space between the span and the wall and it got away from him. He made a grab for it and caught it, only to slip off himself. The rope around his waist stopped him, and he swung out over the drop, clutching the barrel, then lost it as the wind slammed him into the span again, breaking his grip.
He stared down, sucking air with his guts sinking, as the barrel dropped away to the river and Grundi hauled him back up into position.
Kazakin glared at him from where he was tying off another barrel under the span. "No more of that, laddie," he said. "We haven't many barrels to spare."
***
The sun was just cresting the peaks of the Dragonback Mountains when Laenfel's horn sounded. Kazakin cursed and looked up just as he was throwing down a bundle of matchcord to Halgrin, who was helping Zarri and Wendt string it along the underside of the bridge.
"More time!" he said. "I need more time!"
"I'll give it to you," said Halgrin. "Pull me up."
Kazakin nodded and waved to Grundi, who, being the strongest of them, had been designated the lifter and lowerer.
"Bring me up too!" called Wendt. "I want to die fighting, not falling!"
"Keep stringing the matchcord," said Halgrin as he started to rise.
"One dwarf can't defend the bridge!" Wendt argued. "It's too wide! You need someone beside you!"
"Bring him up," said Kazakin. "He's right. Besides, he's as useless as an elf with the fuses. I'll come down."
As Grundi caught Halgrin's hand and pulled him over the balustrade, Laenfel galloped up on Wendt's horse.
"They are a half mile away," she said.
Kazakin chewed his white moustaches. "We've five more barrels to prime, and more matchcord to string." He glanced at Halgrin. "You may have to hold them for a bit."
"Good," said Halgrin, untying the rope from his waste. "I'm ready."
He picked up Olnir's hammer from where he'd set it, and marched toward the Ekrund end of the bridge. Behind him, Grundi began hauling up Wendt while Kazakin tied a rope around his waist and made ready to go down again.
"May Grimnir welcome you, slayer," he called.
Halgrin nodded, but didn't look around. Already the others were fading from his mind. All he could think of was the coming battle and the peace that would come with it. Images of Olnir’s spear-pierced body flashed through his head. Today Halgrin would take vengeance on Olnir's killer - not the miserable goblin who had thrust the spear through him, but the fool who had let the goblin into the dwarf camp in the first place, the fool who had fallen asleep on patrol, the fool who had broken Olnir's arm and cracked his skull in a stupid fight over nothing.
After a moment novitiate Wendt joined him and they stood together at the end of the bridge, waiting, as the wind sang around them.
"Another chance for glory, eh?" the young knight said. "My second knightly deed in the space of a day."
"I do not fight for glory," said Halgrin.
"No?" Wendt asked. "Then I have misunderstood. I thought we were the same, fighting for honor."
Halgrin shook his head. "You fight to win honor. I fight because I have lost it. I fight to right a wrong that can only be repaired with my death."
"Suicide?" said Wendt, shocked.
"No," said Halgrin. "Sacrifice. A meaningful death to make up for a meaningless life."
Wendt stared at him for a long moment. "Well, luck to you then, I suppose," he said.
"And to you," said Halgrin.
A cloud of dust appeared over the crest of the nearest hill, through which could be seen the dull glint of rusty armor and the hulking shapes of brutish bodies. Halgrin and Wendt readied themselves as they watched the orcs start down the near side of the hill. There seemed half as many as at the battle of the camp. Only seven big iron-clad orcs lumbered after Stinkfang, and a dozen or so milling, squabbling goblins. Still, they would be more than enough for one bare-chested dwarf armed with a mining hammer and a young knight in patched armor, both exhausted from manhandling heavy powder barrels underneath a windswept bridge.
"Two more barrels to be primed," called Grundi from behind them. "And one last cord to string. Kazakin says five minutes more!"
Halgrin wasn't sure he could hold the orcs for five seconds, but he would try.
"I will aid you with the four arrows I have left, warriors," came the high, clear voice of Laenfel. "But I regret that I cannot join you in battle. Someone must get the news back to Ekrund Fortress, whether the bridge falls or stands, and I am the swiftest."
"How dutiful she is," said Wendt, worshipfully.
"Typical elven cowardice," muttered Halgrin.
The knight glared at him, but if he spoke, his words were lost in the roar that rose from the orcs and goblins. The greenskins had finally seen them, and were storming down the last fifty paces of the track toward the bridge, shaking their choppers and spears.
Halgrin and Wendt hefted their weapons, all else forgotten. Halgrin wanted to face Stinkfang himself, but some of his lighter armored boys were getting out ahead of him, and it looked like they would close first. The goblins, craven little beasts that they were, jogged behind, waiting for the battle to be joined before they committed themselves.
Halgrin roared a challenge at an enormous orc with a face like a diseased pig. The monster roared back and turned his way, raising a huge chopper at him. But before the orc had taken another two steps, an arrow appeared in its forehead and it crashed down in front of Halgrin like a dead ox, skidding to a stop an inch from his boots.
"Thieving elf," Halgrin rasped, then leapt up on top of the fallen orc to face the one that charged in behind it, swinging an iron-shod club. Halgrin ducked it and smashed the orc’s knuckles as it swept past. The orc howled and dropped the club, and Halgrin flattened him with an overhead smash to the face. Then two more were on him and he was fighting to hold his ground.
Beside him, Wendt was doing the same. He parried an axe smash that nearly knocked him off his feet, then gutted another orc with a lightning thrust to the belly. A third orc fell screaming with an elven arrow in its eye.
A tiny spark of hope flared in Halgrin's chest. Four orcs down already. They might actually do it. They might actually hold them back. But then Stinkfang and the goblins entered the fray, and the spark died like it had fallen on snow.
The warboss stood head and shoulders above his boys, and was wider and thicker too - a huge, mad-eyed behemoth in scrap-yard armor, with an axe that looked to have been made from a fence-post and the blade of a plow. He shoved through the other orcs to the front of the fray and swung the unwieldy chopper at Wendt.
The knight jumped back and tripped over the body of the orc Laenfel had felled. Three goblins were on him before he could recover, and stabbed him in the neck and groin and armpit. He roared in pain and hacked two of them down, but then Stinkfang's axe came down and caved in his head and chest, turning them into pulp.
Halgrin nearly took a club to the back of the head as he stared. The young knight's death had been so sudden, and so inglorious. Of course Halgrin had expected them both to die here, but he had imagined a more fitting end for poor Wendt. He dodged the club at the last second, then shattered its wielder’s elbow with smash from his hammer.
Stinkfang shook the remains of Wendt off his plowshare axe and turned toward Halgrin. Two of Laenfel's arrows thudded into the warboss's filthy armor, but didn't pass through. He kept coming.
Halgrin swept around with his hammer, fanning back the swarming goblins, then charged. Stinkfang slammed down at him with his axe. Halgrin veered aside and the axe bit into the bridge, shaking it. He swung at Stinkfang's side, but his blow rang off the orc’s armor, stinging his hands.
A goblin sliced his shoulder with a spear. Another stabbed his leg. Halgrin swiped at them, driving them back, but more darted in. An orc with a red banner flapping over its ugly head swung a club at him. He barely blocked it. There were too many. He resigned himself to the fact that he was going to die the same inglorious death as Wendt had - brought low by lowly minions instead of facing the biggest and best.
Then a black shadow arced over his head and landed amongst the goblins, lashing out at them with a slim, silver blade. It was Laenfel.
"This is against my better judgement." she said, running the banner orc through. "But we must succeed. Look out!"
Halgrin turned, then dropped flat as Stinkfang's massive axe whooshed over his head. He rolled and swung at the warboss's ankle and won a roar of pain as the hammer smashed home.
Stinkfang hacked down at him again and he dodged. Laenfel cut down another goblin that would have run him through as Halgrin recovered.
"Fight the leader, slayer," said the elf, falling in behind him. "I will guard your flanks."
Halgrin nodded. The shadow warrior's strategy was sound, but he wasn't going to tell her that. He got in front of Stinkfang again, then shot a look back over his shoulder. Grundi and Zarri were pulling Kazakin up onto the bridge. The old engineer held the ends of half a dozen matchcords in his hand.
Stinkfang swung again. Halgrin leapt back, then tried to smash his hands, like he had with the other orc, but the warboss was too quick. His hammer struck only air, and he had to duck another backswing. Laenfel steadied him and chased off another goblin.
"The fuses are lit!" cried Kazakin from behind them. "To the cart! The fuses are lit!"
Halgrin's heart surged with joy. "Now," he growled. "Now I can die!"
He charged forward, swinging for Stinkfang's knees, and cracked one hard on the cap. The warboss roared and slashed at him. Halgrin spun aside and hit him in the thigh.
"Luck to you, slayer!" called Laenfel. "Die well!" And with a last stab at a passing goblin, she sprinted for the wagon.
A few scrambled after her. Halgrin let them go. The others could deal with them. It was Stinkfang he had to stop. If the warboss caught the wagon, none of them would make it off the bridge. He dodged another axe blow and blocked the warboss's path again as he heard the clatter of hooves and the rattle of cartwheels behind him.
"Not so fast, dung-breath," Halgrin growled.
A goblin shrilled gibberish to his right, and Stinkfang looked over. The little horror was pointing to one of the spitting fuses, which was crawling along the side of the bridge, woven through the balustrade. Halgrin took advantage of Stinkfang's distraction and smashed his jaw. The warboss stumbled back, roaring, and knocked Halgrin sideways with a backhand, then barked orders to the goblins.
Halgrin cursed. The scampering fiends were trying to put out the matchcords. He ducked away from Stinkfang and chased after them, knocking one off the bridge with a swipe, then crushing the skull of another.
Stinkfang came after him, slashing with his axe. Halgrin dove away, then rolled up to attack another goblin who was hacking at a fuse with a dagger. As he knocked it aside, the sputtering flame disappeared over the edge of the bridge, following the matchcord as it trailed down toward the barrels strapped to the supports.
On both sides of the bridge, goblins pointed over the side and shrieked with fear. Halgrin turned and saw Stinkfang stopping in mid-stride to look left and right.
"That's right, orc," Halgrin laughed, grinning savagely. "Whether you kill me or not,
you‘re dead. We will die together."
A glint of fear showed in the warboss's tiny red eyes, and with no warning he turned and ran for the Ekrund end of the bridge.
"No you don't!" shouted Halgrin, and sprinted after him.
He swept his hammer at Stinkfang's ankles and knocked his feet out from under him. The warboss went down with a crash of armor and lost his axe, then tried to scramble up again. Halgrin jumped on his back and struck at his head. With a clang, Stinkfang's heavy helmet spun away.
The huge orc rolled and snarled, grabbing behind him with one massive hand. Halgrin smashed his fingers with the hammer and he howled, but then caught Halgrin in both hands and held him over his head, making to throw him off the bridge. With a roar of rage, Halgrin swung down with all his strength and caved in Stinkfang's skull, spraying brains and gore all over, and snapping the haft of Olnir’s hammer in two.
Then, as if the blow had been a trigger, huge fiery explosions rocked either end of the bridge, shaking the whole world, and as Stinkfang toppled backwards, Halgrin still clutched in his dead hands, the bridge fell with him.
Halgrin watched in vertiginous wonder as the two ends of the bridge sheared off in a cloud of flying debris while the center dropped toward the raging torrent below, turning slowly but remaining intact. As he fell, he looked toward the far end to see if Kazakin and the others had gotten away before the blast, but just then a piece of masonry struck him on the forehead and the world went dim.
The last thing he felt as the blackness engulfed him was a horrendous impact, and the cold embrace of water.
***
In the endless night of death, something struck him on the cheek.
"Wake up, slayer," someone said.
Halgrin frowned. Did Grimnir slap the new arrivals to his hall? Was it some sort of initiation?
"One of you sit on his back and pump the water out of him," said the voice again.
Halgrin's frown deepened. That didn't sound like anything he expected Grimnir to say.
Someone turned him on to his chest and a heavy weight was dropped on his back. He coughed and heaved, and a stream of water spewed painfully from his mouth. The pain made him blink and then open his eyes.
"He's alive after all," said a cold female voice. "You dwarfs are hearty folk."
Calloused hands rolled him back over and helped him sit up. He looked around. He was on a muddy bank of a river. Orc and goblin bodies floated by in the current. Some had washed up on the shore. Kazakin squatted down in front of him, smiling.
"Good work, laddie," he said. "You killed Stinkfang, and kept those little green menaces from snuffing out my fuses."
"We saw that final blow," said Grundi, grinning from behind Kazakin. "Well struck."
"Aye," said Zarri, joining him. "We've decided to dub you Shatterskull because of it. Halgrin Shatterskull. Has a nice ring to it."
Halgrin groaned and hung his head. This was the worst thing that could have happened. He was supposed to have died. Now he would have to try and kill himself all over again. What a paradox Grimnir had set for his chosen. A slayer could not simply lower his hammer in the middle of a melee and let himself be killed. The god would not accept into his halls he who had not tried his hardest. A slayer had to fight to the best of his abilities, and yet if he did - and if he won and lived, then really he had failed, and would have to suffer the agony of his shame until he could find another foe that might be able to give him the death he craved.
"I don't want a name," Halgrin said at last. "I want to meet my doom."
Kazakin chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry, lad,” he said. “There's always tomorrow."
THE END
"Well, once there was only chaos. You ask me, order's winning". - Grandmaster Siegfried Trappenfeld
- Kragg
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Re: Guys help please!!!
Post#3 » Tue Dec 01, 2015 11:28 am
There are many WH Fantasy e-books on torrents too. Dozens.
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