The warboss was huge — twice the height of a dwarf, and nearly as wide as it was tall. Its armour was a patchwork of scrap metal and looted plate. Dwarf breastplates served it for shoulder pieces. A necklace of staring human heads hung around its tree-trunk neck, woven together by their hair. As Gotrek and Felix got closer, Felix heard an angry, high-pitched screaming, and realised it was the boss' green-glowing cleaver, keening for blood. The runes on Gotrek's axe glowed red as it neared the fell weapon.

All around the brute was chaos — dwarf warriors pushing forwards to get into the fight, quarrellers angling to get a clear shot, the warboss' hulking lieutenants hacking and chopping right and left, trying to win favour with feats of mad savagery.

The warboss cut a dwarf in two, the cleaver slicing through the warrior's heavy ring-mail as if it were butter. The metal literally melted and flowed at its touch.

Gotrek leapt up on a pile of dwarf bodies and swung his axe, its runes trailing red. The orc threw up his cleaver and the weapons came together in a shivering clash. Sparks flew. The cleaver shrieked like a wounded daemon. The warboss roared and lashed out, furious at being thwarted. Gotrek blocked and bashed back, and the axe and cleaver began weaving a whirling cage of steel and iron as he and the orc hacked and countered.

The boss' black orc lieutenants surged forwards, howling for blood. Felix, Thorgig and Kagrin closed with them to protect Gotrek's flanks. Felix dodged a serrated axe swung by a one-eyed orc, then stepped in and stabbed the monster in its remaining eye. It bellowed in rage and pain, striking out blindly in all directions. A wild swing gutted one of its comrades. Two more killed it and thrust it behind them.

Felix jumped back as the orcs slashed at him. There was no sense parrying. The massive axes would only shatter his blade and numb his arm. On Gotrek's left, Thorgig bashed an orc's club aside with his shield and chopped through its knee. It toppled like a tree. A cleaver caught the wings of Thorgig's helmet and knocked it flying. He blocked another attack with his axe. The force of the blow nearly flattened him. Kagrin, who had been hanging back, darted in and gashed the orc in the side with a beautifully made hand axe. Thorgig finished it off.

Gotrek parried another swing of the warboss' cleaver, then turned his axe so it screeched down the cleaver's haft and severed the orc's fingers. They dropped away like fat green grubs, and the glowing cleaver fell. The warboss roared and fumbled uselessly for it with its bloody stumps. Gotrek jumped up onto its knee and split its bony skull down to its sternum.

The black orcs stared as Gotrek rode the huge orc's collapsing body to the ground, and two died from dwarf axes before they recovered themselves. Three leapt at Gotrek, all trying to reach him first. He fanned them back with his axe and snatched up the warboss' cleaver. It crackled with angry green energy where it touched his skin. Gotrek didn't flinch.

"Who's the next boss?" he called. "Who wants it?"

As the three black orcs advanced again, Gotrek tossed the humming cleaver behind them. They lifted their eyes, following its arc, then turned and dived, elbowing and punching each other to get at it. The other lieutenants looked back at the commotion and saw the first three fighting for the cleaver. They roared and joined the scuffle, their dwarf opponents forgotten.

The dwarfs pressed forwards, swinging for the orcs' backs, but Gotrek threw out a hand.

"Don't engage!" he shouted. "Let them fight."

The dwarfs stepped back. The orc brawl was turning deadly. One of the lieutenants buried his axe in the chest of another. Others were bellowing for their followers to come to their aid. Orcs began peeling away from their fights all along the dwarf column to rally to their leaders. Felix saw the glowing cleaver cut an orc's head off, but its wielder was stabbed in the back and another took it up.

Gotrek wiped his axe on the trampled grass. "That's done it," he said, satisfied, and started to the front of the column again. Felix joined him.

Thorgig glared at Gotrek's back as he retrieved his dented helmet and followed with Kagrin. He seemed disappointed that the Slayer had prevailed.

More and more orcs were deserting the dwarf line to join the scrum over the cleaver. Others were fighting amongst themselves. By the time Gotrek and Felix rejoined Hamnir, the dwarfs' line of march was clear.

Hamnir grunted, reluctantly impressed. "Thought you'd take the Slayer's way, and try to fight them all while we died behind you."

"I swore to protect you," Gotrek said, coldly. "I don't break my oaths."

The column started forwards as the orcs fought on.

CHAPTER FOUR

The dwarfs' mood, already grim because of the casualties the orcs had inflicted upon them during their exit from Barak Varr, grew grimmer still the deeper they travelled into the Badlands. Though they saw few orcs, signs of their rampage were everywhere.

The land had been plagued by the orc hordes for as long as dwarfs and men had settled there. Their invasions were as common as spring floods, and almost as predictable, and the hardy folk of the plains protected themselves from them as if from a storm. The few settlements huddled tightly around strong keeps, into which the farmers and their livestock could retreat when the greenskins came. There they would wait out the ravaging of their farms until the savage tide receded, then return to their land and rebuild.

This time, because so many men and dwarfs had gone north to fight, it had been much worse. There had been no one to stop them, and the orcs had followed their lust for slaughter wherever it took them. The devastation was entirely random. Hamnir's army came upon villages burned to the ground, everyone slain, and then, not five miles on, others absolutely untouched, the farmers harvesting their fields with nervous eyes straying to the horizon and look-outs posted on every hill.

They passed castles with banners waving, and others that were nothing but charred ruins. The farms and houses around these were razed to the ground, the picked bones of the peasants and their families strewn about the blackened circles of cooking fires. Nothing edible was left where the orcs had been. Livestock had been eaten, fruit trees and grain bins stripped, hogsheads of ale and wine drained and smashed.

The only men who hadn't been thrown into the stew pot were those who had been used for sport. Rotting corpses in ruined armour had been nailed, spread-eagled, to trees, crude targets painted on their chests. Dozens of black arrows stuck out of them. Most had missed the bulls-eye. Other corpses hung from the battlements of castles as warnings, savagely mutilated.

It was a grim march, and Gotrek was grim company, even more taciturn and dour than usual. He kept as far from Hamnir as he could, walking at the back near the baggage train, while Hamnir marched at the head. Only when the scouts reported orcs or other dangers in the vicinity did Gotrek return to the front and take up a guard position near his old companion.

The Slayer spoke to Felix hardly more than to Hamnir. He seemed entirely withdrawn, staring at the ground ahead of him as he marched, and muttering under his breath, ignoring Felix entirely. The other dwarfs ignored him too, eyeing him warily if they looked at him at all. Felix couldn't remember any other time in his travels with Gotrek when he felt more of an outsider, more alone. On all their other adventures, there had been at least a few other humans with them — Max, Ulrica — though she wasn't human anymore, was she? Here, he seemed the only member of his species for a hundred leagues. It was a strange, lonely feeling.

At every stop, while the other dwarfs smoked pipes or cooked up sausages and mushrooms, or took their ease, and Felix penned the day's events in his journal, Thorgig's silent friend Kagrin took out a gold-trimmed dagger and a set of tiny files, chisels and gouges, and worked impossibly intricate designs into the pommel and crosspiece. He did these entirely freehand, and yet the work was perfectly symmetrical and precise, the epitome of the angular geometric style the dwarfs favoured. Even the other dwarfs were impressed, stopping in the middle of setting up their tents to watch him work and give him praise or advice. He took both without a word, only nodding curtly and bending even more intently over his work.

Felix watched him too, as much for his oddity as his workmanship. He had never seen a quieter dwarf. The race as a whole seemed born to bluster and brag, but Kagrin hardly ever raised his eyes, let alone his voice. On one or two occasions, however, Felix caught Kagrin frowning at him, only to look away as soon as Felix met his eyes. Other dwarfs in the camp stared at Felix as well, belligerent, challenging glares as if they were offended by his mere presence and asking him to defend the existence of his whole race. Kagrin's gaze was different — more curious than angry.

Then, on the evening of the forth day, after they had made camp and eaten dinner, Kagrin sat down near Felix and began to work on the dagger as usual. It took him an hour of filing and tooling before, at last, he looked up at Felix and cleared his throat.

"Aye, goldsmith?" said Felix, when Kagrin failed to speak.

Kagrin looked around, as if fearful of being overheard. "Er, I... I wished to ask, as you are human..." He trailed off. Felix was about to prompt him again when he finally found his voice, rumbling almost inaudibly. "Are... are dwarfs well thought of in the lands of men?"

Felix paused. He didn't know what question he had been expecting, but that wasn't it. He scratched his head. "Er, well, yes, generally. Their craftsmanship is highly praised, as is their honour and steadfastness. There are some among the less learned who look upon dwarfs with suspicion and jealousy, but most treat them with great respect."

Kagrin seemed heartened by this answer. "And... and there are places where dwarfs live peacefully beside men?"

Felix looked at him surprised. "There have been dwarf enclaves in the cities of the Empire for a thousand years. You haven't heard of them?"

Kagrin's shoulders tightened and he looked around again. "Shhh! Aye, I have, but I've heard... I've heard it said that dwarfs must lock themselves in at night, for fear of men out to murder and rob them. They say dwarfs have been burnt at the stake as enemies of man."

"Who says this?" asked Felix, frowning.

"Dwarfs of my clan."

"Ah." Felix nodded. "Forgive me if I impugn the motives of your clan brothers, but perhaps they are reluctant to lose a goldsmith of your calibre, and tell you tall tales of the barbarity of man to dissuade you from leaving."

"I haven't spoken of leaving!" hissed Kagrin angrily. His fists clenched.

"Of course not, of course not," said Felix holding up his palms. "I can see that you are only curious. So, er, to satisfy that curiosity: I have never heard of dwarfs being burnt at the stake or called enemies of men. It is true that there have been accounts of mobs — instigated usually by jealous and desperate smiths — attacking dwarf houses, but it is rare. I haven't heard of it happening in this century at all. Dwarfs are long established in the Empire. Most of these passions cooled long ago. A dwarf who did contemplate setting up shop in the Empire would have little fear of trouble, and great prospects for success, particularly if he was as skilled a goldsmith as... well, as some I could name."

Kagrin nodded brusquely, and then shot a guilty look towards Thorgig, who sat with a handful of other dwarfs, playing a game with stone pawns and dice.

He turned back to Felix and bowed his head. "Thank you, human. You... you have, er, satisfied my curiosity."

Felix nodded. "My pleasure."

He watched after Kagrin as he gathered up his tools and retired to his tent. It was strange to think of someone who no doubt had thirty years on him, as a "poor lad", but Felix couldn't help it. It was clear that Kagrin felt torn between the lure of the wide world and the bonds of friendship and family. He had a hard road ahead of him, whatever road he chose. Felix wished him well.

After six days marching at the slow but steady dwarf pace, the Black Mountains, which had been a low saw-toothed line on the horizon when the dwarfs had left Barak Varr, filled the northern sky, an endless line of giants that stood shoulder to shoulder for as far as the eye could see to the east and west. Dark green skirts of thick pine forest swept up to the towering black granite crags that gave the range its name. Their snowy peaks shone blood red in a blazing sunset.

"Home," said Thorgig, inhaling happily as he gazed up at the splendid peaks.

For mountain goats, thought Felix, groaning at the thought of all the climbing to which he would soon be subjected. A cold wind blew down off the slopes. He pulled his old red cloak tighter around him and shivered.

And perhaps he shivered for reasons other than the cold, for, although the dwarfs thought fondly of the place as home, it stirred in Felix less pleasant feelings. It had been not far from here that Gotrek and Felix had helped the ill-fated Baron von Diehl try to found a settlement, only to have it razed to the ground by wolf-riding greenskins. At Fort von Diehl Gotrek had lost his eye, and Felix had lost his first love. He shook his head, trying to keep her ghost at bay. Kirsten. He wished he hadn't been able to remember her name.

"There is Rodenheim Castle," said Hamnir, a little further on, pointing to a stern, squat-towered castle perched on one of the forest-covered foothills that splayed out from the mountains like claws. "It is a great shame that Baron Rodenheim won't be among those who muster here to help us. He was a true Dwarf Friend. May his gods receive him."

The army started up the weedy cart track that wound up the hill to the castle, and soon began to see signs of its demise. The little village that clung to the slopes below it was shattered and burned, the stone houses roofless and toppled, the shrines desecrated. Cracked bones were heaped in corners like snowdrifts. A horrible stench came from the town well. Flies hovered above it. The red twilight painted the scene with a bloody brush. Felix had seen a lot of slaughter and ruin in his years with Gotrek, so it no longer turned his stomach, but it never failed to depress him.

The castle too was the worse for wear. Though its walls still stood, they were scorched and black in places, and great chunks had been knocked off the battlements. Flags with the insignia of Karak Hirn flew over the roofs of burned towers.