A sound of movement came to them faintly from the top of the cliff, barely discernible over the roar of the falls. A spill of pebbles rattled past Gotrek to drop towards the lake.

Felix thought he heard a command given in a high, harsh voice, but couldn't make out the word. Whatever it was, the speaker hadn't sounded human or dwarfish.

The dwarfs stayed as motionless as statues, listening. The sounds of movement came again, fainter and to the west, and then were gone. After a moment, Gotrek resumed tapping in the next piton.

"Goblin patrol," said Druric.

Narin nodded.

"Do they know we're here?" asked Sketti, looking up anxiously.

"We'd be dodging boulders if they knew we were here," said Thorgig.

Leatherbeard grunted. "Not a Slayer's death."

"They know," said old Matrak in a faraway voice. "They know everything. They know where the keys are. They know where the doors are."

The others looked at him. He was staring into the distance, his eyes seeing nothing.

"Poor old fellow," said Narin under his breath.

Gotrek reached the top shortly thereafter, and threw down a rope. Old Matrak went up first, the line hooked to his belt for safety. As troubled as he was in his mind, he was still sure in his movements. He let go of his piton and swung out on the dangling rope without a qualm. Then he climbed up hand over hand until he reached the bulge and could gain

purchase with his foot and iron leg-spike again.

Felix went up fourth, after Druric. He had shinned up many a rope in his travels with Gotrek, and faced many a danger, but swinging out over that drop was one of the hardest things he'd ever done. Only the sceptical scowls of the dwarfs waiting their turn kept him from hemming and hesitating endlessly before letting go. He would be damned if he would let them think him more of a buffoon than they already did.

Of course, this hope was dashed when one of his cleats slipped as he began climbing up the underside of the bulge. He lost his footing and slammed face first into the cliff, bloodying his nose. He caught himself and recovered almost instantly, but he could hear the guffaws of the dwarfs below and above him. His face burned with embarrassment as he topped the bulge and Gotrek held out a hand to haul him up.

"Well done, manling. You're the first to shed blood in the recovery of Karak Hirn," said the Slayer, grinning.

"The first to shed his own," said Thorgig, chuckling behind him.

"I'll be happy to shed somebody else's," said Felix, glaring at Thorgig. The young dwarf was beginning to get on his nerves. He had reason to hate Gotrek, Felix supposed. The Slayer had been more than insulting, to him and to Hamnir, but Felix had given Thorgig no cause to be angry. No cause but his mere presence, he thought. Thorgig was no Sketti, but he had the dwarfish disdain for all things non-dwarf.

Felix looked around. The cliff top was a broad flat ledge, like a landing halfway up the mountain. The rest of the peak still loomed above him, its white snowcap silhouetted against the blinding sun. A deep black pool — a mirror-calm twin to the roiling cauldron below — was cut into the ledge by ages of erosion. To his right, the pool spilled over the edge of cliff to become the narrow silver thread of the falls. There wasn't much room twixt water and cliff edge. It felt as if he and the dwarfs stood on the rim of a giant stone pitcher that forever poured water into a stone cup far below. The top of the falls was thin enough to jump, but the prospect of slipping made Felix's skin crawl.

Druric was studying the ground at the cliff edge. "It was goblins," he said.

"So, they're looking for us?" asked Sketti, glancing around warily.

"Not necessarily," Druric answered. "There are regular patrols through here." He pointed. "New prints over the old."

Gotrek turned to Matrak as he helped Leatherbeard up. "Which way to the door?"

Matrak waved to the east, beyond the stream, where the cliff-top ledge rose gradually to a split between the main body of the mountain and a rugged smaller peak — a broad shoulder to the karaz's proud head. "Up. Through there."

"The grobi went that way," Gotrek said. "Get your armour on."

The dwarfs took off their cleats and pulled mail shirts, pauldrons and gauntlets from their packs, replacing them with their climbing gear. Felix buckled on a scale-sewn leather jack, and fixed his old red cloak around his shoulders. None of them carried shields, which would have been too heavy and cumbersome while climbing.

Gotrek left the rope over the bulge in place and hopped the roaring falls. The dwarfs followed him across, apparently without a second thought. Felix held his breath as he took a running jump and tried not to imagine falling in the water and being dragged over the edge by the rushing current.

Safely on the other side, the company followed the ledge as it rose to the split between the mountain's head and shoulder. This was a narrow, shadowed cleft that wound crazily between the two peaks, and then opened out onto a sway-backed saddle of hard-packed snow that sloped up to the black flank of Karaz Hirn to their left, and down to a sheer cliff on their right. The last few yards before the cliff were black ice — frozen run-off from the slanting plain of snow, as glossy and smooth as the lip of a wine bottle.

As they were about to step out of the cleft onto the snow, a patch of red and green on the far side drew Felix's eye. A dozen goblins were hacking apart the carcass of a mountain goat, and its blood stained the snow all around them. Like the orcs they had seen before, the goblins were maintaining a very un-greenskin-like silence. They weren't fighting over the choice bits, or devouring their portions immediately, but instead stuffed the bloody legs and flank steaks into their packs for later.

"They're in the way," quavered Matrak, pointing to a dark gap in the rock face on the far side of the slope of snow. "The door's beyond that pass."

"We'll have to take them, then," said Narin.

"Thank Grimnir for that," said Sketti. "The day I hide from goblins is the day I shave my beard."

Leatherbeard growled in his throat.

"Shut up and attack," said Gotrek. He started forwards at a run.

The dwarfs charged after him as fast as they could, which, by Felix's standards wasn't very fast. He had to keep to a trot, so as not to get too far ahead.

The goblins saw them coming, but didn't shriek in alarm, or scatter in blind panic as goblins were wont to. Instead, they just dropped the bits of hacked-up goat they held and turned to face the dwarfs, as silent as monks.

Druric loosed a crossbow bolt that took one goblin high in the chest, then threw the crossbow aside and drew a hand axe. He and Felix and the dwarfs crashed into the runty greenskins like a battering ram, mowing them down with their sheer mass. Four goblins died immediately, axes buried deep in their scrawny chests and pointy skulls. Three more were bowled off their feet. Gotrek split one in two. Felix hacked at a second, a tiny, snaggle-toothed horror that rolled away from his blade. Old Matrak stomped on another with his iron leg-spike, impaling it.

The goblin leader chittered an order as he fought Thorgig, and two goblins peeled away from the fight to scamper up the rise. Leatherbeard sent one of his axes spinning after the runners, dropping one, but the other was nearing the opening at the top of the snowy slope.

"After him, manling!" called Gotrek. "Make those long legs useful!"

Felix sprinted up the incline, his feet smashing holes in the hard crust of snow. The goblin darted through the dark gap and down into a dropping, rocky cleft. Felix charged in after him, gaining with every step. The goblin looked back once, emotionless as a fish, and then ran on.

The floor of the cleft was filled with rocks and loose gravel. Felix slipped and slid as he ran down it, twice nearly twisting his ankle. He came within a yard of the goblin and swiped at it with his sword, but it leapt ahead, ducking around a big boulder and out of sight. Felix swung wide around the boulder, and found himself suddenly on the lip of a wide crevasse that dropped away into blackness. He lurched left, heart thudding, his scrabbling feet kicking pebbles into the abyss, and twisted away from the edge barely in time.

The goblin scampered up a rocky rise before him. Felix surged after it, skin prickling at the closeness of his narrow escape. No one would ever have found him had he fallen into that chasm. No one would know what had become of him: a horrible end for a memoirist.

The goblin slipped on loose scree and fell on its face as it reached the crest of the rise. Felix closed on it rapidly. It picked itself up again and dived over the ridge. Felix leapt after it and tackled it to the ground. They rolled down the far side of the ridge in a tangle of limbs, and jarred to a stop at the base of the slope, the goblin on top. It raised its saw-bladed short sword to stab him, but Felix clubbed it off his chest with his free arm and rolled on top of it, slashing down with his sword. The steel bit through the goblin's skull. The little green monster spasmed and lay still.

Felix collapsed to the side and lay with his cheek on the cold rock, panting and wheezing, glaring at the dead goblin beside him. "Got you at last, you filthy — "

An enormous fur-booted foot stepped into his circle of vision. He looked up. A huge orc in scrap armour loomed over him, staring down. Twenty more stood at its back.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The orc slashed down at Felix with a huge double-bladed axe. Felix yelped and rolled. He was deafened as the axe bit deep into the ground, an inch from his shoulder, pinning his cloak. Felix surged up, the cloak nearly strangling him before it ripped free. Another orc swung at him. He jerked aside and ran, stumbling and unsteady, back up the ridge.

The orcs raced after him, unnervingly silent. Felix pounded down the slope towards the black chasm, skidding within inches of the drop as he turned into the narrow confines of the rocky pass. He heard the orcs thundering behind him, and then a fading bellow as one of them missed its footing and tumbled into the depths. The rest came on, not sparing their lost comrade a backwards glance.

A stitch stabbed at Felix's side as he scrabbled up the tight, rising path, and his breath came in ragged gasps.

He'd already been winded when he caught the goblin. Now he felt as if he was going to die. He wanted to stop and vomit, but the orcs were so close at his heels that he could hear their breathing and smell their rank animal odour. The ground shook with their footsteps.

The light from the snowfield glowed at the top of the shadowed pass like a beacon of hope. It looked a hundred leagues away. He slipped on a loose rock and this time he did twist his ankle. It flared with sudden agony. He cried out, and nearly fell. Swift steel whistled behind him and an axe rang off the rock wall beside his head.

He scrabbled on, ankle screaming with each step. He didn't have the luxury of favouring it — just jammed his foot down and took the pain as best he could. At last, nearly fainting with agony, he gained the top of the pass, inches ahead of the orcs, and burst out onto the snowfield. A slashing cleaver grazed his scale-covered shoulder and sent him sprawling. He slid face-first down the snowy incline towards the cliff.

The dwarfs were marching up the slope with the dead goblins behind them. They readied their weapons as he sped toward them, looking beyond him with eager anticipation on their faces. Gotrek stepped out and Felix crashed into his knees. The Slayer hauled him up.

"Er," said Felix, probing his throbbing shoulder. The orc had cut through the leather and torn off some of his scales, but he was unbloodied. "I got the goblin."

"Good," grunted Gotrek, and stepped past him, hefting his axe.

The orcs were spreading out in an even semi-circle and marching down in a dressed rank, weapons at the ready. Felix shivered at the sight.

"They aren't orcs," said Sketti, uneasily, echoing Felix's unspoken thought. "They can't be. They're something else, dressed up in green skin."

"Elves, maybe?" said Narin, smirking.

Druric looked over his shoulder, down the slope. "They mean to keep us in front of them. They want to push us off the cliff."

"Let them try," said Leatherbeard.

The orc leader jabbered an order and the orcs charged, uttering not a word. The dwarfs braced and met the attack with an unmoving wall of sharp steel. Gotrek blocked the leader's first strike, shattered its war axe with his return blow, and then cut its legs out from under it. Two more leapt in to take its place.

Narin and Druric fought back to back in a ring of three orcs. Leatherbeard was stepping over one dead orc to get to another, two dripping double-bladed axes in his massive hands. Sketti Hammerhand and old Matrak fought an orc that wielded an iron mace the size and shape of a butter churn. Thorgig and Kagrin butchered another with their axes and turned to face two more.

Felix fought a short, barrel-gutted brute with a head like a green pumpkin. Strange, he thought, as he slipped an axe stroke and missed with an attack of his own. Though their tactics were vastly improved, and though their fury seemed to be contained, the strange orcs still fought like orcs, slashing with great, clumsy swings that could flatten a building if they connected, but more often than not missed. Why had one aspect changed and not the other? And what had changed them in the first place? Then he stepped awkwardly on his twisted ankle and all thoughts went out of his head in a rush of pain.

The orc saw him stumble. It swung. Felix lurched aside and ran it through the ribs, jolting his ankle again. The orc collapsed. Felix nearly joined it. The world was fading in and out around him. Another orc attacked, this one stringy and tall. Felix groaned. He wasn't ready. He blocked and retreated, limping badly.

Half the orcs were dead, and not a single dwarf had yet fallen, but by sheer weight and numbers, the green-skins had forced the stout warriors back almost to the black ice that glazed the edge of the cliff. Gotrek killed another and it slid past him as it fell, spinning noiselessly into the void.

Felix stepped back again. His bad foot shot back on the ice. His knee hit the slick surface with a smack. His vision went black and red. He was sliding backwards. The tall orc pushed in, eager to finish him off, and instead sat down abruptly as its feet flew out from under it. Felix grabbed at the greenskin's belt, more to stop himself sliding than as an attack, and pulled the orc towards the edge. It scrabbled uselessly with thick yellow fingernails at the hard ice, then it was gone.