Gotrek & Felix - 8. Orcslayer

"Would you mind very much not breathing so loudly?" he growled.

"I could stop breathing entirely, if you like," Felix said, snappily, for he too had been less than sparing with the ale the night before.

Gotrek pinched his temples. "Yes, do. And don't shout."

At last, after another hour of argument and reforming, an order of march was settled upon, and the dwarf army got underway. They were accompanied by Odgin Stormwall, commander of the landside fortress, a stout, white-bearded old veteran, and a company of Barak Varr's city guard — fifty dwarfs in ring-mail and blue and grey surcoats accompanied them. Odgin explained the situation above as they marched.

"The grobi filth besiege the fort," Odgin explained as they marched, "though they're not trying very hard to take it. Mostly, they're eating and drinking every bit of forage to be had within fifty leagues, and slaughtering every caravan that comes to trade with us. When they get restless, they make a run at the walls and we turn them back. Usually they just lob rocks and gobbos at us."

"Why don't you just march out and destroy them?" asked Thorgig who walked at Hamnir's side with his silent friend Kagrin.

Odgin exchanged an amused smile with Hamnir, and then nodded at Thorgig. "Oh, we'd like to, lad, but there's more than a few of them. Why should we put ourselves at risk when we're nice and safe behind our walls?"

"But you're starving in here," said Thorgig.

"Aye, and they'll starve out there sooner," said Odgin. "When they've killed all the livestock and looted all the towns within a day's march, their hunger will win out over their patience and they'll move on. They always do."

"What if you starve before they do?"

Odgin chuckled. "Your orc isn't much on rationing. Our lads may complain about tightening their belts and running out of beer, but we can feed the hold for another two months or so on biscuit and spring water." He turned to Hamnir. "Now, Prince Hamnir, here's how we'll get you away. If you were to march out of the main gate, you'd have every orc in the camp after you, but there's a hidden sally port round the back. It goes underground for a bit and comes up in one of our old barns." He grinned. "Orcs smashed it up a bit, and burnt the roof off it, but they never found the door."

"And the greenskins won't see us when we march out?" asked Gotrek. "There are six hundred of us."

"That's what these lads are for," said Odgin, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the company of Barak Van-city guard. "It's them who'll march out the front gate, and when the greenskins come running to get stuck in, you will slip out of the sally port and away."

Hamnir blinked and looked back at the dwarf guards. "They mean to sacrifice themselves for us? That is more than we wished. I — "

"Oh, it won't be any sacrifice. They're like that short-beard there," he said, nodding at Thorgig. "They've been wanting to come to grips with the greenskins since this business started. We'll pull them out of the fire once you're away. They'll go no further than the gate."

"Nonetheless," said Hamnir, "they put themselves in danger in order to help us, and I thank them for it."

"There isn't a dwarf in Barak Varr that doesn't want to see Karak Hirn restored, Prince Hamnir," said Odgin. "The Hirn holds the Black Mountains together. It protects the Badlands. We'd not survive long without it."

When Hamnir's column reached the top of the Fusing Road, great granite doors swung out and they marched into the wide central courtyard of Kazad Varr, a massively built dwarf fortress with thick walls and square towers at each corner. Felix looked behind him, momentarily disoriented. He had expected the doors to the long tunnel to be built into a cliff-face or mountainside, as was usual with the entrances of dwarf holds, but here there was no mountain. The doors were built into a squat, arrow-slotted stone structure that occupied the space where, in a castle, the central keep would have stood.

Within the fort all was calm. Dwarf quarrellers in blue and grey surcoats patrolled the walls, and cannon crews watched from the towers. They hardly raised their heads when, after a distant thud, an oddly shaped missile arced high over the wall and slammed, screaming, into the flagstones, not thirty feet to Hamnir's left.

Felix looked at it. It was a scrawny goblin with a spiked helmet and poorly made leather wings tied to its arms. Its neck was broken and its body burst. Blood spread out from it in black rivulets.

"Idiots," said Gotrek.

Felix blinked at him. "But you... on the ship, you did the same..."

"I made it."

As the dwarfs of the Barak Varr city guard continued on towards the main gate, Odgin led Hamnir and his army towards the back of the fort to a stone stables, built out from the back wall. At the rear of the stables, Odgin unlocked and opened a pair of big ironbound doors. Behind them, a broad ramp descended into a tunnel that passed under the fortress wall.

"Hold here until the guard is fully engaged and the signal is given," said Odgin. "When you leave the barn, march straight ahead. The west gate of the old pasture wall is only a hundred yards beyond, and once through it, your force will be shielded from the eyes of the orcs."

Gotrek spat, a disgusted sneer twisting his face. Felix smirked. Even when it made tactical sense, Gotrek didn't care to hide from an enemy.

There was a short wait. Then, from across the fortress came the clatter of chains and gears, and Felix could see the huge doors of the main gate swinging out and the portcullis rising. With a fierce shout, the Barak Vanguard marched forwards into the mouth of the gate, helms and axe blades flashing in the morning sun.

A rising roar from beyond the wall echoed their shout. It grew louder and more savage with each second.

"They've seen the bait," said Thorgig, chewing his lip. It looked to Felix as if the young dwarf would rather be at the main gate than here.

Soon after came the unmistakable sound of two armies slamming together shield to shield and axe to axe. Thorgig's eyes glowed, and the other dwarfs shifted restlessly, gripping their weapons and muttering to themselves.

Gotrek groaned and massaged his temples. "Don't suppose they could fight quietly?" he grumbled.

The sound of battle intensified. Felix could see violent movement in the open arch of the main gate — flashes of steel, falling bodies, surging lines of green and grey.

Finally, a flutter of red came from the wall above the gate — a banner waving back and forth.

"That's it," said Odgin. "The whole horde's coming now. Off you go."

Hamnir saluted Odgin, fist over his heart. "You have my thanks, Odgin Stormwall. Karak Hirn will not forget this."

Odgin returned the salute, grinning. "Remember it next time we come to trade sea pearls for sword steel, prince."

Hamnir motioned his troops forward and marched down the ramp into the tunnel. It was a cramped space compared to the Rising Road, with only room enough for four dwarfs to march abreast. After less than two hundred paces it ended in another ramp, rising, it seemed, to a blank ceiling.

Hamnir called a halt as Thorgig stepped to a lever in the left wall.

"Companies ready!" called Hamnir.

The dwarfs drew their axes and hammers. Quarrellers set bolts on strings. Gotrek took a drink from his canteen. Felix hefted his sword, nervous.

"Open!" called Hamnir.

Thorgig pulled the lever. With a rumble of hidden gears, the ceiling rose and split, and bright morning sunlight poured into the darkness.

Hamnir raised his axe. "Forward, sons of Grungni! March!"

The column started up the ramp, Hamnir in the lead, Gotrek and Felix in the first rank with Thorgig and Kagrin. They came up in a ruined bam. The building was roofless — the walls mere heaps of rubble. Skeletons of sheep and cattle were littered everywhere, bits of rotting meat still stuck to them.

As the dwarfs stepped from the barn and began marching towards the pasture gate directly ahead of them, Felix looked around at the orc camp to their right — an endless clutter of ragged skin tents, gutted and toppled outbuildings, make-shift boar pens and refuse, that spread out in all directions from the front gate of the dwarf fortress. Crude, leering faces were painted on the tents in blood and dung. Flies buzzed over heaps of rotting garbage on which human bodies and bones had been tossed. Primitive totems hung above the bigger tents, proclaiming the dominance of this or that chieftain.

From all over this shambles, orcs ran towards the main gate. The entire camp seethed with movement. Warbosses and their lieutenants chivvied their fractious troops towards the open gate with curses, kicks and slaps. Hulking green warriors snatched up their weapons and beat their chests. Tiny goblins unleashed fang-toothed, four-legged beasts that looked like deformed pigs. Blood-daubed war banners, decorated with severed human and dwarf heads, waved above swarms of enraged orcs, all roaring challenges.

There was a mob mustering directly behind a stand of tents just to the right of the dwarf column — so close that Felix could have seen the yellows of their eyes if they had been facing towards them.

The bulk of the fort was between Hamnir's force and the main gate, so it was impossible to see how well the Barak Varr guards were faring, but the sound of steel on steel still rang in Felix's ears, so he knew they weren't dead yet.

Thorgig ground his teeth. "Not fair," he said, under his breath.

Felix shook his head. Imagine wanting to be in the way of that savage green avalanche. He, for one, was happy to be slipping out of the back door. He looked around. They were almost halfway to the pasture wall gate, but the tail of the column had not yet emerged from the tunnel in the barn.

Suddenly, from the right, came a belligerent shriek, very close. The entire dwarf column looked right. A goblin that had been trying to corral one of its unruly pets had seen them. It turned tail and ran, bug-eyed. The dwarf quarrellers fired, and a score of crossbow bolts flashed after it. They were too late. The little greenskin dodged around a tent and ran towards the mustering orcs, screaming at the top of his lungs.

"That's done it," said a dwarf behind Felix.

"Good," said Thorgig.

Orcs were turning and pointing and calling to their mates. Warbosses were screaming orders.

Hamnir cursed. "Double time!" he shouted. "Double time! Hurry it up!"

"You running, shopkeep?" asked Gotrek as the dwarf column picked up its pace. "Can't stomach a good set-to anymore?"

"If I lose half my troops here for the sake of `a good set-to'," snarled Hamnir, his face tight, "what am I to do at Karak Hirn, when the battle means something?"

Gotrek glared at Hamnir's logic, but continued mot-ting along with the others, much to Felix's relief.

The orcs were coming. A mob of massive green-skinned warriors poured around the shattered houses, roaring for dwarf blood, bone and skin totems bobbing like grisly marionettes overhead. Goblins scampered in their wake, long knifes glinting.

Hamnir's head swivelled from them to the gate and back. "We're not going to make it," he muttered. "We're not going to make it."

"Then turn and fight, Grimnir curse you!" said Gotrek.

Thorgig looked uneasily at Hamnir. "Your orders, prince?"

"Orders," said Hamnir, as if he didn't know what the word meant. "Yes, of course. I..." He looked around again, eyes showing white. The orcs were fifty feet away and closing fast. "Grungni take it. Quarrellers, right! Fire! Fire! Column, dress right!" His voice was thin with tension.

The quarrellers fired, and twenty greenskins went down. There was no time for a second volley. The orcs were on them, slamming into the right side of the column in a piecemeal charge as the dwarfs belatedly turned out to face them.

Axe and cleaver met blade-to-blade and haft-to-haft in an impact that Felix could feel through his feet. Notched black iron smashed through shining dwarf mail and sturdy dwarf shields, biting deep into dwarf flesh. Gleaming dwarf axes chopped through leather and scrap armour, cleaving green orc-flesh and shattering white orc-bone.

Gotrek pushed to the front line and laid about him like a thresher, separating orcs from their sinewy limbs and their ugly, thick-skulled heads. Felix drew his dragon sword, Karaghul, and joined him, keeping just out of the sweep of the Slayer's great axe. He stabbed a goblin in the mouth and ducked a club like a tree stump, swung by an orc with brass hoops piercing his up-jutting tusks.

Dwarfs fell right and left under the orc onslaught, but the line never wavered. They took the orcs' savage blows on their shields with stoic determination, and fought back with grim, glowering calm. There were no wild attacks, no desperate lunges, only a steady, relentless butchery that dropped orcs one after another. Even Hamnir was calming, as if the physical work of swinging his axe was steadying him.

A mob of orcs broke and ran, pin-cushioned with bolts and driven back by the dwarfs' implacable attack. The gang beside them caught their panic and retreated as well, bellowing savage curses.

"We're turning them," said Hamnir, dodging back from a cleaver swipe and cutting its owner's wrist to the bone. "We just might — "

A thunderous roar came from the cluster of tents. Felix kicked a goblin in the face and looked up. An enormous orc warboss was stomping towards the battle with a crowd of black orc lieutenants surrounding him. He bellowed at the fleeing orcs and pointed an angry finger at the dwarf column.

The orcs cringed from his displeasure and reluctantly turned back towards the dwarfs.

"Luck of the dwarfs," growled Hamnir, bashing an orc in the knee with his shield.

"The big one's put the fear of Gork in them," said Gotrek. He seemed almost pleased.

The warboss smashed into the centre of the dwarf column, his black orcs and the backsliders beside him. His huge cleaver cut a bloody trench through a company of Ironbreakers. It seemed to glow with a greenish light. Dead dwarfs flew back, severed limbs spinning away as the boss chopped and hewed. His black orc lieutenants ploughed in after him. Bolstered by his presence, the orcs attacked with renewed fury all along the dwarf line.

Hamnir cursed under his breath. "You wanted a good set-to, Gurnisson," he snapped over his shoulder. "On your way, then."

Gotrek was already out of earshot, charging down the column towards the rampaging orc chieftain. Felix hurried after him, as did Thorgig and Kagrin.

"Want to see the crested coward in action," Thorgig grunted. "Maybe he'll punch the orc in the nose when he isn't ready."