Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Briknir-Grimnir’s face hardened. ‘There’s a reason your father didn’t tap you for the runefatherhood of Ulgaen-ar. Too full of bloody stupid ideas, that head of yours is. Leave us? You’ll be stripping our defence mighty thin, lad. Your father wanted you to open up the old halls, strengthen the Ulgahold from the inside out, not tear it apart.’

‘My father is dead!’ said Ulgathern-Grimnir. ‘And I am a runefather in my own right. It is my command that my portion of the folk of Ulgaen-ar leave.’ He choked on his own words, and became quiet. ‘Before it is too late.’

Briknir-Grimnir’s lips thinned. ‘You’re strong-headed. I have to respect that. I can’t stop you. It’s your right to go if you want it. But you’ve a touch too much fire in your brain if you reckon on this being a good idea.’

‘Thank you, uncle.’ Ulgathern-Grimnir bowed.

‘Two things, nephew. You don’t have to bow to me any more, you’re a runefather now.’

‘Right,’ said Ulgathern.

‘And the other is this, you try to take any of my folk with you, or tell them what you told me to get their bellows pumping and the iron in them soft enough that you can beat your daft ideas into them, then I’ll take that as an act against me, and I won’t hold back.’

Ulgavost stepped forward from the throng of Ulgaen-ar’s representatives. ‘I’ll come with you brother, more for the adventure than anything else. There’s not much here for me now.’

Ulgathern-Grimnir nodded at Ulgavost gratefully. Encouraged, he looked to the others. They looked away.

‘Tulgamar?’ said Ulgathern-Grimnir. ‘I know you’re torn. Come with me. Your magmadroth would be mighty handy.’

‘I…’ said Tulgamar. ‘I can’t.’

‘Your brother can make up his own mind!’ snapped Briknir-Grimnir. ‘Now get gone if you’re going. I won’t wish you luck, because you’ll need more than there is in all this realm. I only hope you don’t get us all killed and that your ur-gold isn’t lost for all time.’

‘Ur-gold is never lost, Runefather,’ said Marag-Or.

‘So you keep saying,’ Briknir-Grimnir slumped into his throne. ‘But if this kahuz-bahan has his way, some will be. Go on Ulgathern-Grimnir. Audience is over. Get out.’

Drokki emerged from a hidden door low down the Ulmount. The underway between the ruined hold of Gaenagrik and the Ulgahold was blocked for a way, and he was forced to venture over ground. He consulted the map in his hand, an ancient artefact made of etched brass. It showed the many ways that had once existed to Gaenagrik. Only one existed now.

Gaenagrik would be dangerous, unstable after so many years uninhabited. The moulding runes that held its stone together would have failed, leaving it at the mercy of the Hornteeth Mountains’ rumblings. He could find his way to the city easily enough, but he did not know the safe way through to the hold’s realmgate. In point of fact, he did not know if the gate were still accessible. He needed a guide, and it was to look for one that he ventured outside the safety of the duardin city.

Drokki followed a path along the cliffs over the Hardgate. He looked down often onto the Chaos camp, nervous he would be seen. Cries of ecstasy and agony drifted up from the town and wild music played from many quarters, clashing discordantly. Under the harsh, acrid smell of ash and burning rock, there was the cloying stink of daemonic perfume. Bat-winged creatures sported in the sky over the camp, showering it with their excrement and fluids. It was these that Drokki feared the most. If they spotted him, they would be on him in moments, and would tear him to pieces. But they were absorbed with their games and they did not see him. Luckily, he did not have far to go.

A black hole opened in the mountainside. Drokki scrambled gratefully toward it, steadying himself with his good arm as he skidded down the loose material into the welcome dark.

The angry red sky was reduced to a ragged patch that flickered with distant lightning. He was back in the underway to Gaenagrik, and he hurried down out of sight.

A few hundred steps from the opening, the tunnel broadened. The raw rubble of rockfalls was replaced by carefully laid blocks of granite. Smooth setts, so artfully laid that the joins were almost invisible, paved the floor. He held up his lantern and ignited it with a word.

The old road to Gaenagrik stretched ahead into the black.

This is it then, he thought, and set off at a hurried pace.

Signs of war were visible here and there — the bones of an overlooked duardin, or shattered remnants of enemy armour. The underway was otherwise free of debris and in good condition. The realms were filled with ruins, but ‘duardin-made, eternally stays’ went the old saying, and here that was evident.

The underway sloped downward. Gaenagrik Mountain was lower than the Ulmount. He went as fast as he dared, trying to make his footfalls as light as possible, painfully aware that this was the route his own ancestors had fled along when Gaenagrik had fallen, and that to all objective sense he was heading the wrong way.