Battle for Skull Pass Read online

  Dagskar slapped his chest. “Ain’t I tough? Lookit the notches on my stuntie sticker.”

  “Yrr,” said Skarsnik, his eyes drifting back to the squig as another human was goaded forward. “Tough enough, I guess.”

  “And ain’t I a good leader?” added Dagskar, raising his voice over the roaring and screaming and crunching of bones. “Didn’t I squash dem Red Chins and still have half my boys left?”

  “Yrr,” said Skarsnik again, nodding distractedly.

  “And ain’t I smart? Wasn’t long ago I was shovellin’ Gobbla’s scat. Now look at me!”

  Skarsnik did just that, turning away from the carnage and staring at Dagskar with sudden beady intensity. “Yrr,” he said at last. “Yer smart all right.” He waved back the goblins that were prodding the next human forward. “Hoy. Leave off a minute!”

  Dagskar edged back as Skarsnik pushed himself up off his throne and waddled down the uneven steps to the floor to circle him, his spindly arms behind his back and his pot belly swaying. “Right,” he said. “You wanna be big boss, dat’s okay by me.”

  Dagskar’s green lips split in a snaggle-toothed grin. Finally!

  Skarsnik wasn’t finished. “But! Y’gotta pass a test first. A big boss test.”

  Dagskar’s stomach turned upside down. He’d seen some of Skarsnik’s tests before. Usually they involved fighting Gobbla, armed with a stick. He wasn’t going to let on he was afraid, though. That would be suicide. He kept smiling. “Fair enough. I’ll take any test y’got. You name it.”

  Skarsnik’s smile matched his own, a full complement of razor-sharp teeth. “Right, den. Here it is. Get rid of dem stunties in Skull Pass. Dey’s like fleas on my backside. Itchy, but too hard to reach. You scratch ’em, you get t’be big boss. You blow it, yer back to squig scat, got it?”

  Dagskar glared as the assembled goblins giggled. He knew what the warboss was up to. Skarsnik had sent goblins after the Skull Pass stunties loads of times, and it always ended in the goblins getting it in the neck. He obviously thought Dagskar was getting too big for his boots, and wanted to get rid of him. And it might work. Those stunties were tough, and no mistake. But what if Dagskar won? Skarsnik wouldn’t look so smart then, would he? And Dagskar would be a big boss among big bosses. Everybody would want to walk behind his banner.

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “Dem stunties’ll be dead before it snows, or I’m squig meat.”

  “Good either way,” said Skarsnik, laughing.

  The rest of the goblins snickered derisively. They didn’t think he had a chance.

  Dagskar turned and walked out of the hall, growling under his breath. He’d show them. That stunties was as good as dead.

  But to do it, he was going to need some help.

  Godri ducked a hurled beer mug as he stepped into the Wyvem’s Demise, the taproom of Clan Byrnik’s brewery, the second largest structure in the above-ground settlement that spread out in front of the future hold. Rodrin and Aurik filed in behind him. In the centre of the drinking hall was a whirling scrum of dwarfs, all throwing punches and furniture. In the centre of the scrum was a tattooed, bare-chested slayer, laying about him with fists the size of tankards, his red crest bent flat and a lump growing on his head from some previous impact.

  “You farmers don’t know the meaning of courage,” he was roaring. “I’ve killed a dragon, I have!”

  “Who saw you?” sneered a dwarf in a smith’s apron.

  The slayer knocked him down with a right hook. “You doubt my word, you kruti hill trash?”

  Godri had seen enough. He snatched up an iron mug and pounded it on the bar. “Leave off, you lot! Leave off!”

  There was no response. The fighters were too busy.

  Aurik stepped forward and bellowed. “Stand down for the thane! Stand down for Godri Thunderbrand!”

  This worked. The dwarfs looked over their shoulders and saw who was among them and eventually stepped away from the slayer, who finally looked up when he realised he had no one left to swing at.

  “Thank you, my son,” said Godri, nodding to Aurik, then he turned to the combatants. “Now then,” he said. “What’s this all about?”

  “Your lads called me a coward,” snarled the slayer, a stranger to the World’s Edge Mountains named Borri Graniteskin, who had come to rid them of the troll that had been terrorising the settlement for the last year. “They dared to claim that I have no intention of going after your troll.”

  A young dwarf named Skaari Otgunsson stood up from the wreckage of a table. Godri knew him. He was a cowherd, the orphan son of a dwarf who had been one of Godri’s most loyal followers. The lad usually tended the clan’s herd, up in the high pastures.

  “It’s true,” said Skaari, combing splinters out of his short brown beard with his fingers. “All he’s done is drink twice his share and take advantage of our hospitality. It’s been two weeks, and what has he done? Nothing! I lost another calf last week. We want to see some results!”

  Borri pounded his chest with his heavy fist. “I’m building up my strength! It’s no small thing to fight a troll. I know. I’ve fought one, unlike you lot. I’ll fight that troll, but not until I’m good and ready.”

  Skaari made a rude noise, which was echoed by the rest of the battered dwarfs.

  Borri’s face turned as red as his crest and he started towards Skaari, his fists balled. “And I’ll not be called a coward by a cowherd!”

  Godri pounded on the bar with the iron mug again, bending it out of shape. “That’s enough!” he shouted. “That’s enough. Any more fighting and I’ll keep the troll and slay you!”

  Borri turned and fixed him with cold eyes. “Will you, now?”

  Godri held his gaze, not backing down an inch. “I’m not one to question a slayer’s courage or his methods—slayers are a strange, brave breed and their ways are their own. But like all dwarfs, I do believe in value for money. Therefore, if you don’t start after that troll in three days, you will no longer be welcome in Skull Pass. Do I make myself clear?”

  Borri continued to stare at him, his fists clenched, then snorted. “Three days. You think I’ll need that long? I’ll bring his head back in two.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it,” said Godri. He turned to Hirri, the bar-keep, and flipped him a gold coin stamped with the seal of Karak Eight Peaks. “Next round’s on me, but they’ll all chip in for the cost of the broken furnishings, won’t they?” He swung his head back towards the combatants. They nodded their heads sheepishly.

  Godri grinned and stepped back out into the early winter sunshine with Rodrin and Aurik at his back. A minor problem in the life of a thane, but he was pleased to have solved it so smoothly No feuds started, no grudges to be written in the book.

  He looked around at his settlement as he strolled down its main street. On the one hand, it pained him that all was not yet underground as it should be, but on the other, it was more prosperous and populated than he could have imagined in the bad years. Dispossessed dwarfs from far and wide had come to join his clan and share his dream, and the place bustled with commerce and industry.

  The brewery was hissing and booming as the ale-makers stoked the fires under the great vats. By the stream, the mill was grinding flour for their bread. The forges were clanging out staccato rhythms as the smiths shaped ploughs, scythes, hammers and axes. Tanners and leather crafters and jewellers and stone carvers all worked in front of their shops in the cool mountain air. Dwarf-wives sat in circles, carding wool and spinning yarn for clothes and cloaks.

  Godri beamed with pride. Despite all the tragedies and setbacks, his people were happy. And in another year, or at the most two, they would be happy underground and all would be well. King Lunn would come and Godri would show him what his determination had wrought.

  “One more winter,” he said.

  Rodrin and Aurik nodded. They’d had this conversation often enough that Godri didn’t have to explain further.

  “Aye,” they said in unison. “On
e more winter.”

  Dagskar Earscrapper pushed through the dense undergrowth of the forest the Crooked Moon goblins called the Niffy Woods, holding his nose. The place smelled like bad eggs and sour milk and the trees grew funny. The mushrooms that sprouted from them didn’t do anything except kill any goblin foolish enough to have a taste—not that that didn’t have its uses. He had already tucked some in his pack, just in case.

  Dagskar’s handpicked boys looked around them nervously as they followed. Night goblins didn’t like the woods much as a rule, and these woods were creepier than most. The trees loomed over them like many-limbed giants, and huge spider webs stretched from branch to branch like tent-roofs; fat, goblin-sized cocoons dangling from them at the ends of sticky strands. Some of them struggled weakly.

  “We almost dere, boss?” whispered Kizaz, Dagskar’s diminutive banner carrier and general whipping boy, who, in addition to holding aloft a long pole with a Crooked Moon totem on the top, was lugging Dagskar’s pack, spear and tent on his back.

  “We’re here,” said Dagskar, stepping up to a big tree with a leering face carved into its bark. He rapped on the tree with the iron knob at the end of his whip handle. “Hoy! Nazbad!” he shouted. “Nazbad Wartfinger! Come out, y’ugly snotling-fondler! I wants a word with ya!”

  There was no response except for a strange skittering and chittering from high in the trees. Dagskar’s followers gripped their spears and craned their necks, looking for the source of the sound.

  “Who wants me?” came a voice from ground level.

  Dagskar and his boys whipped around. Stepping out of the undergrowth was a wizened old goblin shaman in a dirty wolfskin. Weird fetishes hung from his wrists and dangled from the gnarled staff he carried. His face was painted in strange yellow designs. A handful of forest goblins on giant spiders guarded his back. The big beasts picked their way through the scrub as delicately as elves, and almost as creepy.

  “Nazbad! Brother!” cried Dagskar. “How’s yer wart? Still full’a power?”

  “Less of it, Earscrapper,” snarled the shaman. “Just coz we fought humans together one time don’t make us bruddas.” He folded his arms across his sunken chest. “Whaddaya want?”

  Dagskar grinned. “Dat’s Nazbad for you,” he said. “Right to the point, as always. Fair enough. Here it is. I aim t’take out da Skull Pass stunties once and fer all, but I needs yer help t’do it. Y’want in?”

  Nazbad’s eyes bugged out, then he looked around at his spider boys. They all laughed.

  “Somebody drop you on yer head?” he asked. “Not a chance! Dem stunties is tough. And dey’s hard to reach with a big mob too. Only way is over da bridge at No Bottom Gorge, and dey got that bottled up tighter den a fish’s backside.”

  “Dat’s why I needs you and yer spider boys,” said Dagskar. “To do da tippy-toein’ while my boys does the heavy hittin’.” He tapped his skull with a long finger. “I has a plan.”

  Nazbad scratched his chin, thinking hard. “An’ why should we help da likes’a you take a stuntie hole? What’s in it for us? Plunder?”

  Dagskar waved a big-knuckled hand. “More’n dat. If we take it, Skull Pass is yers. I don’t want it. I only wanna win da fight t’show Skarsnik I can be big boss. You can nab da hole, and everythin’ in it. I don’t care.”

  Nazbad’s eyes glittered with greed. “Da hole and everythin’ in it? For true?”

  “I swears by Gork and Mork,” said Dagskar, holding up his hand.

  Nazbad gave him a suspicious look. “We’ll see about that. I remembers how we split shares after raidin’ dat human village.”

  “It wasn’t me who cheated yer!” said Dagskar. “It was Budgoz, and Budgoz is dead. I killed him!”

  Nazbad still looked uncertain. “Dat’s as may be,” he said. “But yer no better than he was.” After a moment, though, he shrugged. “All right, why not. I’ll take a chance. Dem stunties got a lotta good swag. You can have some of my spider boys, but I’m comin’ along t’keep an eye on things. And if you double-cross me…” He held up his middle finger. A huge hairy wart grew from the knuckle. The bulbous thing seemed to glow green in the shadows of the forest. “It’s da wartfinger for you.”

  Dagskar held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “No need for dat, Nazbad. We’s all friends here, right? Now listen. Meet me in da woods near da bridge over No Bottom Gorge at midnight tomorrow night, and be ready for da Waaagh! I’ll be dere. But first I gotta see a troll.”

  “Has the slayer still not moved?” asked Faril Hammersong as he slapped the reins against the ponies’ backs. He and five other rangers were taking the timber wagon up through the sturdy oaks of Copperwood Forest to cut fire logs for the winter. This would be the last run of the year. The woodsheds were almost full and there was a scent of snow in the air.

  “Nah,” said Argi Argisson, who walked alongside the cart, his axe over his shoulder. “Two days after Thane Thunderbrand told him to put up or get out, and Graniteskin’s still sitting at Byrnik’s, drinking our ale like there was no tomorrow.”

  Faril laughed and ducked a branch that grew down from the trees that arched over the narrow forest track. “For him there isn’t. If he doesn’t go after that troll tomorrow he’ll be out on his tattooed arse.”

  Argi prodded his bandaged nose, which the slayer had broken in the brawl at the brewery. “I hope he doesn’t go. I want another crack at him. He put my nose out of—what was that?”

  Faril looked up. He had heard it too—a clicking and shifting in the leaf-shrouded tops of the oaks. He held up a hand. “On your guard, lads. Something’s in the trees—”

  A javelin shot out of the branches and struck his helm, knocking him backwards onto the bed of the empty cart as both spear and cap bounced away.

  “Ware!” cried Argi, swinging his axe off his shoulder. “Ambush! Watch your—!”

  Before he could finish, giant barb-legged spiders with goblins on their backs leapt down from the trees, slamming him and the rest of the rangers to the ground. The ponies screamed in fear and tried to bolt, but more goblins swarmed out of the woods and grabbed their reins.

  Faril sat up and drew his hatchet as all around him came the sounds of fighting, but then another goblin-mounted spider jumped down on top of him, pinning him down, its bony mouth-pieces clicking inches from his face. Faril got his arm free and lashed wildly at the monster, sending a mandible spinning away in a spatter of black fluids, but the thing crushed him to the wagon with its fat abdomen and tried to tear him apart with its razor-sharp claws. The goblin on its back giggled and stabbed at him with a javelin.

  Faril squirmed out of the way of the thrusting point and swung up underhanded with his hatchet, biting deep into the spider’s yellow and black thorax. The thing flinched and skittered back, tearing the hand axe from Faril’s grip and nearly throwing its rider.

  Faril scrambled up and grabbed a big tree-felling axe from under the driver’s bench, and then leapt at the spider and the goblin, who were gathering themselves for another spring. But as he swung for the spider’s eight eyes, the wooden haft of the axe burst into green flame, burning his hands.

  With a cry of pain and surprise, Faril let go of the flaming axe, and the spider pounced on him, bearing him down again, and this time the goblin’s javelin stabbed him through the chest. He clasped at the shaft with his blistering hands, trying to pull it out. The goblin did it for him, jerking it out as the spider clattered over him and hopped onto Argi, who was fighting another spider rider beside the wagon.

  Blood poured out of the hole in Faril’s chest and pooled around him as he struggled to sit up. His arms and legs were growing weak. He looked past the wagon, searching for someone to help him, but they were all dead or dying, pierced by the goblins’ spears and torn apart by the spiders’ claws.

  As his vision began to fade and his head to sink back, Faril saw a scrawny goblin in a wolfskin striding down the track toward the wagon, his arms raised. Green energy radiated from him like
a halo, and with each step, green flames burst from the trees and bushes around him.

  They’re burning the forest, he thought. I must warn the thane. He tried to move, to stand, but he was too weak. Too much of his blood was spreading across the planks of the wagon. His head fell back. The world went black around him—black and hot and smelling of smoke.

  THREE

  Godri, Rodrin and Aurik ran out of the hold and looked up over the roofs of the settlement to where the others were pointing. A towering column of smoke was rising up from beyond Boar Back Ridge and drifting south and east.

  “That way lies Copperwood Forest!” said Aurik.

  “It’s on fire,” said Rodrin.

  “Aye,” said Godri, his heart sinking. The Copperwood Forest was vital to Karak Gram’s survival. The timber gathered there fuelled the hearths and forges of the settlement. They had fortunately brought in most of the firewood they needed for this winter, but what of the next, and the next after that? It took decades for a forest to grow back from a fire. There were other woods in the vicinity, but they were much harder to reach, and more dangerous to enter. This could set foundry production back for years.

  “It’s the curse,” said Rodrin, pulling at his beard. “It strikes again.”

  “No more of that!” snapped Godri. “There is no curse. There will be a reason for this.” He turned to his son. “Weren’t Faril Hammersong and the others on their way there for a last wagon of timber?”

  “Aye, father,” said Aurik. “They left just this morning.” He bowed to Godri. “Father—thane—I will take my scouts and see if I can learn the cause of this fire, and what has become of Faril’s rangers.”

  Godri nodded, pleased that his son was taking the initiative and stepping into the role of leader. He would make a fine thane when Godri passed on. “Very good,” he said. “But take no chances with the fire. Only find Faril and his dwarfs and return them safe to us.”

  “I will do my best, father,” said Aurik. He bowed again, then hurried off, calling for his chosen dwarf scouts.