The Great Betrayal (25 page)

She unleashed the magicks she had crafted and a vast serpent fashioned from bloody light painted the gorge in a visceral glow before it snapped hungrily at the runelord.

Once more Agrin foiled her sorcery, a rune of warding extinguishing on his staff as he brandished it towards the elemental. She shrieked as the enchantment failed, recoiling as if burned, and pressed a trembling hand to her forehead before snarling at the male sorcerer in the coven as he went to help her.

Despite the fresh tipping of the scales against then, Krondi felt renewed hope. He didn’t have long to appreciate it as the leader of the elves came at him with a pair of sickle blades. The other was still grounded and watched eagerly from his prone position.

From the corner of his eye, Krondi saw Agrin assailed by dark magic as the three sorcerers vented their power as one. Runes flared and died on his staff as the iron was slowly denuded of its magical defences. Outnumbered, the runelord was finding it hard to retaliate, just as Krondi could only fend off the silvered blades of the elf leader intent on his death.

‘Submit,’ the elf snarled in crude Khazalid through clenched teeth, ‘and I’ll kill you quickly.’

Krondi was shocked at the use of his native tongue but knew that some elves had learned it, or tried to.

‘Unbaraki!’ he bit back, invoking the dwarf word for ‘oathbreaker’, for these bandits or whatever they were had broken the treaty between their races and sealed the deed with blood.

‘Your oaths mean nothing to me, runt. I’ll cut your coarse little tongue from your mouth–’

Krondi finally struck his enemy. In the elf’s fervour he had left an opening, one an old soldier like Krondi could exploit. Ribs snapped in the elf’s chest, broken by a hammer blow that the dwarf punched into his midriff.

Mastering the pain, the elf rallied but was on the back foot as the dwarf pressed his advantage. Laughter issued from somewhere close, though it sounded oddly resonant and was obscured by the near-deafening magical duel between Agrin and the coven.

Like he was swatting turnips with a mattock, Krondi swung his hammer with eager abandon. Kill the elf now, bludgeon him with sheer fury and power, or he would be dead like the others. He couldn’t match the elf for skill. Krondi knew this but felt no shame in it, as his father had taught him humility and pragmatism, so that left only brute strength.

His resurgence was only momentary. Dodging an overhead swing intended to break his shoulder the elf weaved aside and trapped the hammer between the razor edges of his sickle blades. With a grunt the elf cut in opposite directions, shearing the haft apart and disarming the dwarf.

Looking on despairing at his sundered hammer, the weapon that in all his years of loyal gatekeeping had never broken, Krondi scarcely noticed the twin blades rammed into his chest.

‘–and then gut you like a fish,’ the elf concluded, a grimace etched permanently on his face from the crushed ribs in his chest.

Krondi spat into it, a greasy gob of blood-flecked phlegm that ran down the elf’s cheek and drew a sneer to already upcurled lips. The dwarf slid off the blades, life leaving him as he hit the ground. He was on his side and tried to claw at the earth, to catch some of it in his numbing grasp and know he would be returning to the world below and his ancestors. Through his muddying vision that crawled with black clouds at the edges, though the storm had long since cleared, Krondi saw Agrin on his knees.

Teeth clenched, the runelord was defiant to the last but the wound he’d been dealt when his guard was down was telling upon him. It was to be his end.

Agrin met Krondi’s gaze across the litter of dwarf and elf dead.

‘A great doom…’ he mouthed before three tentacles like the arms of some kraken forged of eternal darkness impaled him and then tore him apart. Even meteoric armour couldn’t spare the runelord that fate, and so another ancient light of the dwarf race was snuffed out.

Krondi slumped, his final breaths coming quick and shallow. A chill was upon him now, but he heard singing, the crackle of a hearth and the voices of dwarfs he knew but had never met. They were calling his name, calling him to the table where his place was waiting. But as he descended, leaving the world above to embrace those that came before, Agrin’s words lingered and seemed to travel through Gazul’s Gate itself into the dwarfen underworld.

A great doom…

Sevekai slumped, the
pain in his chest from the two broken ribs besting him finally. He scowled at Kaitar who was still lying on the ground, though now more reclining than upended by the dwarf’s crude magicks.

‘Why did you not aid me?’ Sevekai’s tone was accusatory. He still held the bloodied sickle blades unsheathed.

‘Don’t threaten me, Sevekai,’ said Kaitar, rising and dusting off his tunic. ‘You wanted to kill the runt, you said as much to me with your eyes. If it proved tougher prey than you had first envisaged that is no fault of mine.’

‘I heard you laughing when he struck me.’

‘From sheer surprise that the runt landed such a blow. You grew overconfident, but it gave you the focus you needed to finish it.’

Sevekai wanted to kill Kaitar. He
should
kill him, plunge his sickle blades into his heart and end the impudent little worm, but he didn’t. He told himself it was because they had lost too many of their number already but that wasn’t the truth, not really. The truth was that he was afraid of the warrior, of the fathomless black in his eyes, the kind of ennui only shared by converts of the assassin temples, the devotees of Khaine.

Cursing in elvish, Sevekai let it go and turned to the slain dwarfs.

As before on the Old Dwarf Road he was careful, ensuring there was nothing in the murders that would suggest anything other than asur involvement. He suspected most of the stunted creatures wouldn’t be able to tell druchii from asur anyway, but it still paid to be careful. Couple this most recent carnage with the acts of killing and sabotage happening all across the Old World and the prospects for continued peace looked bleak. It should have satisfied him. It did not.

Touring the massacre he was genuinely dismayed to see the charred corpse of Numenos amongst the dead, if only because it meant he’d need to find another scout from whoever was left. Including Kaitar and Sevekai himself, only five of the shades remained. Enough to do what still needed to be accomplished but preciously short on contingency. There were other cohorts, of course there were. Clandestine saboteurs were hidden the length and breadth of the Old World.

In his private moments, the few he was afforded and only when he was certain the dark lord wasn’t watching, Sevekai wondered at the sagacity of the plan. Unfolding perfectly at present, it would allegedly do much to further druchii ambition but Sevekai could not see that end, not yet. His doubt troubled him more than the thought all of this might come to naught.

‘You appear conflicted, Sevekai,’ a female voice purred from in front of him. Masking his emotions perfectly, Sevekai averted his gaze from the blank stares of the dead and met her equally cold expression.

She
was
darkly beautiful, wearing a form-fitting robe of midnight black. Her skin was porcelain white but she carried a countenance that was hard as marble with a stare to rival that of a gorgon. Hair the colour of hoarfrost cascaded down her slender back as she near paraded in front of him, her spine exposed in a long, narrow slit down robes that also barely cupped her small breasts. She was lithe and ravishing but sorcery had stolen what youth and immortality had given her. Ashniel, her little protégé witch, had the same snow white hair, but did not carry the subtle weight of age about the eyes, neck and cheekbones.

Lust and wariness warred ambivalently in Sevekai, for the last time he had shared her bed he had left with a blade wound from a ritual athame in his back. Not lightly did one consort with Drutheira of the coven, especially if you ever questioned her prowess as a lover. It was meant as a tease, a playful rejoinder, but Drutheira was not one for games. Some scars, Sevekai knew, went deeper than a blade.

The sorceress’s mood was predictably belligerent.

‘You also look weathered,
my love
.’ No druchii could say ‘my love’ with such venom as her. A deadly adder could not achieve the same vitriol should it be given voice to speak. ‘Are those ribs cracked by any chance? Has your peerless
talent
with your little knives finally been exposed for the parlour trick it really is?’

‘I have missed you too, dearest.’ Sevekai’s smile was far from warm, and had more in kind with a snake than an elf. ‘I expected to see you sooner.’

‘Other matters required my attention that I do not have to explain to you.’

Though it pained him, Sevekai gave a mocking bow. ‘I am your servant, mistress.’

Drutheira was gaunt from spellweaving, but she was also injured. A red-raw scar like an angry vein throbbed on her forehead.

Sevekai gestured to the wound. ‘Seems I am not the only one not to have escaped the battle unscathed.’ Her hands were also hurt, burned by the dwarf’s bound magic.

Drutheira touched the scar, her hands already healing from the minor incantation she’d silently performed, and snarled. Her mood changed again, sarcasm lessening in favour of hateful scorn.

‘Little bastard ripped it from my head.’

‘Ripped what?’ asked Sevekai, briefly regarding the dwarf’s corpse. It was hollowed out, as if long dead and drained of all vitality. Dark magic tended to have that effect on the living.

‘The incantation, the spell,’ Drutheira replied, apparently annoyed at Sevekai’s ignorance. ‘It was charnel blood magic and he took it from my mind and destroyed it.’

The others in the coven did not speak, but like jackals they examined every detail of her sudden weakness. Drutheira sensed their murderous ambition, spoken on the Wind of Dhar still roiling through the gorge, and was quick to reassert her dominance.

Malchior, her male suckling, was the perfect example. She thrust her hand at him, turning it into a claw, and Malchior was contorted by a sudden agony.

‘I see your thoughts,’ she hissed, flicking a scathing glance at Ashniel who quailed despite her ostensible truculence.

Veins stood out on Malchior’s forehead like death-adders writhing beneath his skin. He fought to speak, to muster something by way of contrition that would make the pain stop. Instead, he managed to stare. His eyes were oval rings of red, burning flesh. Rage, fear, desperate pleading for the agony to end roiled across his face. Spittle ran down his cheek, drooling through clenched teeth.

‘I could churn you inside out, flay the flesh off you,’ Drutheira hissed, seizing him by the neck of his robe and dragging him to her until mere inches parted them.

She glared, revealing to him the manifold agonies that awaited him, let Ashniel see it too.

‘Crippling, isn’t it?’

Malchior barely managed a nod. ‘
Druth…
’ Crimson flecked his lips as he tried pathetically to speak.

She leaned into his ear, whispering, ‘Do you see how insignificant you are to me?’ before she bit his ear and then looked up at Ashniel.

‘Excruciating… Would you like to try?’

The young sorceress was already shaking her head. Malchior was on his knees, retching. Drutheira released him, and he collapsed.

‘Never put your hands on me again,’ she snarled.

Malchior found the strength to breathe then grovel. He nodded weakly.

‘I only meant–’

Drutheira cut him off with a raised fist, the promise of further torture.

Malchior bowed and spoke no more.

‘Prepare the rite of communion,’ she snapped, sneering at them both. ‘Lord Malekith will know all that has been done in his name.’

Dismissed, Malchior and Ashniel went to find a sacrifice. Some of the dwarfs yet lived, if only just. Although slowed, their blood would still be fresh.

‘Your apprentices, or whatever they are,’ said Sevekai, ‘are viperous little creatures. You should be careful, Drutheira.’

She pouted at him. ‘Is that concern for my welfare I am hearing, Sevekai?’

His face grew stern like steel. ‘What are you really doing here? You need no scout through these lands.’

‘Performing our dark lord’s bidding, as are you I presume. “To each coven a cohort of shades”, you remember now, don’t you?’ She regarded the runelord’s desiccated body. ‘Fortunate that I arrived when I did, it would seem.’

‘Do not expect any gratitude.’

‘Must we fight,
lover
?’ she purred.

Sevekai laughed, utterly without mirth.

‘I still feel your
love
, my dear. It is a wound in my back that is taking its time to heal.’ He winced, his mock humour jarring his damaged ribs.

Drutheira stepped closer. ‘Then at least let me ease your suffering…’

She outstretched her hand, but Sevekai recoiled from her touch.

‘Don’t be such a child,’ she chided him.

Still wary, he relented and showed her the side of his chest where the dwarf had struck him.

‘Now,’ she warned, ‘be still.’

A warm glow filled Sevekai, just hot enough to burn but the pain was tolerable. When it abated again, his ribs were healed.

‘Miraculous…’ he breathed.

Drutheira clenched her fist as he smiled and one of the ribs broke as if she’d crushed it.

Crying out, Sevekai glared daggers at her.

‘Hell-bitch!’

‘A reminder,’ she said, all her genial pretence evaporating into an expression of pure ice, ‘that I can do that to you at any time.’

‘Duly noted,’ said Sevekai. Behind, Kaitar was approaching.

Drutheira’s gaze snapped to regard him.

‘Who is that?’ she asked.

Sevekai thought he detected a hint of anxiety in her voice, even fear, but dismissed it almost at once.

‘He is no one. Just a shade from Karond Kar.’

She lingered on the distant warrior for a moment, and Sevekai took her interest for lust. He tried not to feel jealous, but his fist clenched at the slight.

Drutheira was still staring.