Battle for Skull Pass Read online

  Aurik lay beside him, protected by his armour and the shields of two of his hammerers, who lay on top of him, heads lowered. One of them was knocked away by a maddened cow, and went rolling and bouncing into the stream of cattle, kicked and crushed along with a score of other over-run warriors.

  Skaari leapt on the shield the hammerer had left behind, holding it in place over Aurik. “I have it, thane’s son!” he cried. “Stay down!”

  His words were lost in the clattering roar of the herd’s passage. Another cow kicked him in the shoulder as it leapt over him. Its back feet grazed his helm, tearing it from his head.

  And then the herd was past, but there was no respite. The fading thunder of hooves was drowned by the shrill war cries of the goblins that swarmed in their wake. They enveloped the fallen dwarfs like a flood tide, stabbing down at every one they passed.

  Skaari squirmed aside from three spear points and lashed out with his axe, fanning his attackers back. His ribs screamed, his arms and legs throbbed, his ears rang, but there was no time for pain: giving in to it meant death.

  Aurik lurched up beside him, roaring and bleeding into his beard from a gash on his cheek as he swept out with his shield and smashed Skaari’s goblins to the ground. His remaining hammerer stood beside him and guarded his left flank. Skaari instinctively snatched up the other hammerer’s shield and guarded his right. A dozen goblins thrust their spears at them, howling for dwarf blood.

  “Close up!” shouted Aurik to the few survivors who picked themselves up by the edges of the bridge. “Close up between the towers!” He cleaved a goblin’s skull with Grudge Ender and kicked it away, then started cutting his way to the end of the bridge. “Come on, young cowherd,” he said. “It seems you get to fight after all.”

  Skaari’s heart swelled at the words as he followed, hacking around him with his hand axe. He was protecting his thane’s son—doing a hammerer’s job—in the most brutal battle of his life. This was an end to be proud of! This was a death to brag of in the halls of his ancestors!

  The dwarfs on the bridge rallied around Aurik, and inched towards the space between the towers. The dwarfs that had escaped the stampede regrouped and pushed onto the bridge again to join them.

  They were entirely surrounded by goblins. Though most of the greenskins were still scampering across the bridge, those who had run with the herd had already reached the dwarf side, and were turning back to attack the dwarfs from the rear.

  “Form a square!” called Aurik. “All face out!”

  The dwarfs, drilled in defensive tactics from birth, fell easily into ranks and files and plugged the end of the bridge, facing out both front and back. The tide of goblins stopped, though dwarfs died fighting them all along the edges of the square, which was quickly growing hollow as the warriors in the centre pushed to the edges to replace the fallen.

  Skaari found himself fighting next to Old Harn, who swung an axe in one hand and the bucket of hot pitch in the other.

  “It won’t last,” the stretcher bearer muttered as he fought. “We’ll never hold them. There are too many.”

  “Then we shall thin their ranks before we die,” said Skaari, beheading a goblin. “And send them on to Thane Thunderbrand a shadow of their former selves.”

  Harn grinned wryly. “Read a few sagas, have you?”

  “A… a few.” Skaari smiled sheepishly.

  A horn sounded in the distance, barely audible over the din of battle.

  Aurik’s head lifted. “The reinforcements!”

  “Saved,” said Skaari, knocking aside a goblin’s spear with his shield.

  “No!” said Aurik. “They must not come. They would only join us in death, and to no purpose. They must go back to the hold and protect it.” He turned to his last remaining hammerer. “Gurgrin, your horn. Acknowledge their call, then blow ‘fall back and defend—enemy coming’.”

  The hammerer unslung his horn stoically, though he knew that he blew his own death song. Skaari swallowed as the sharp notes blared out over the melee—a musical version of the rat-a-tat of the old dwarf mine code. That was it then. They had sealed their fate. He wasn’t frightened, but it is one thing to imagine one’s glorious death. It is another to know it is a certainty.

  Far off, the reinforcements’ horn answered Gurgrin’s blast—querying it uncertainly.

  The hammerer raised the horn to his lips again and repeated the orders—“fall back and defend—enemy coming”, “fall back and defend—enemy coming!”, “fall back—”

  The notes cut off with a squawk and Skaari turned to see Gurgrin toppling sideways, his helmet caved in by a cannonball. Skaari stared, shocked. Where had it come from? He had heard no shot.

  “Gurgrin!” cried Aurik.

  Another ball smashed down on Old Harn, shattering his shoulder and knocking him to the ground.

  Skaari and Aurik and the others looked up. The spider riders on the tower tops had won their fights. They stood on the battlements, hurling cannonballs down into the battle and shrieking with glee. Skaari and the others raised their shields as iron balls rained down on top of them. They thudded off the heavy wood in a crushing barrage, nearly driving the dwarfs to the ground. Skaari staggered as his arm failed and his shield cracked him on the head.

  The goblins before them took advantage of their awkward position and stabbed at their bellies. Skaari brought his shield down on three spears and swung his axe over the top, cracking a knobby skull. Aurik too blocked three spears, but a fourth got through. A goblin stabbed him in the neck, just above his gromril breastplate, and the spearhead vanished into his magnificent beard. He staggered back, choking.

  “Aurik!” gasped Skaari, and shoved forward to protect his leader, but a cannonball glancing off another dwarfs shield struck him on the side of the skull, and suddenly he found himself lying on his back with no memory of falling.

  He stared up at Aurik as the thane’s son dropped Grudge Ender to clutch at his now crimson beard, and a dozen goblins leapt on him with spears and daggers and bore him to the ground.

  Then there was nothing above Skaari but sky, which strangely was getting darker, though the morning sun was at last rising above the peaks.

  SIX

  Dagskar cackled with glee as he stepped off the bridge and looked around at all the dead stunties. His gambit had worked! The bridge was his. Now there was nothing between him and the hold in Skull Pass, with its open door and half-finished defences. Ha! Taking it would be like kicking a snotling.

  Or would it? Dagskar paused for a moment as he remembered that he’d lost the troll. It would be a tougher job without the big dummy’s muscle backing him up. He shrugged. He’d have to make do. He had to take that hold! He had to prove to Skarsnik that he was worthy of being a big boss.

  “Hoy!” cried Nazbad, picking his way through the corpses and pointing his warty green finger at him. “Y’really made a mess of that, y’toadstool.”

  “Whaddaya mean,” snarled Dagskar. “We won, didn’t we? We took da bridge.”

  “We? My boys took da bridge—and paid da price. Ain’t but half o’em left. Your boys just ran behind da cows, nice and safe.”

  “I lost plenty,” said Dagskar. “And I didn’t see you comin’ up with a better plan. If I’da left it up t’you, we’d still be on da other side of da bridge, pickin’ our noses.”

  “Bah!” said Nazbad. “All yer plans seem to end up with my boys gettin’ skragged.”

  Dagskar grinned. “What are y’complainin’ about? Less boys, more loot for dem what’s left, right? Now go round ’em up. We’re movin’.”

  “Well den,” said Nazbad, holding up his glowing wart. “How about I kills half your boys? You’d be laughin’, right?”

  Dagskar curled his lip and was about to make a retort when there was a scrabbling and shifting from the edge of the ravine. He and the shaman turned, wary.

  A huge scaly hand reached over the edge and felt around for purchase. It caught at a boulder and pulled, and a massive, u
gly head rose up and looked around, blinking stupidly.

  The troll! Dagskar laughed out loud. The big drooler was still alive after all. Perfect! Now he could go back to his original plan. He turned to Kizaz and kicked him. “Hoy, runt. Get da boys to put all da dead stunties on da wagon, and make sure dey gets da boss stuntie. He goes on top.”

  “Gotcha, boss,” said Kizaz, and ran off, shouting orders.

  Dagskar smiled. “Dis day just keeps gettin’ better and better.”

  Beside him, Nazbad growled. “For some.”

  Skaari lay in soothing darkness. He couldn’t feel anything. He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t smell anything. There was only sweet, soft nothingness that he wished would go on forever.

  Then, though he tried to keep it away, a speck of unease wormed its way into his cocoon of comfort, a niggling dust-mote of guilt that whispered that he shouldn’t be enjoying this. Terrible things were happening outside the velvet black, and he should do something about them.

  The guilt became a throbbing ache, which settled in the side of his head, then spread to his arms and legs. The whisper became an annoying shrilling and cluttering, like fighting stoats. He wished they would stop, and that the ache would go away. It was all making it hard to sink back into the darkness.

  Then the floodgates burst and it all came flowing back at once. The spiders. The stampede. The goblins. Fighting. The crack on the skull. Aurik falling. Pain filled him like blades fresh from the forge. His skull felt like a clay pot that had cracked in the kiln. The kicks from the cows hurt all the way down to the bone. He had to fight to keep from groaning out loud. And the cluttering voices weren’t going away. In fact, they were getting louder.

  Skaari opened one cautious eye, then winced instantly as the sun stabbed down at him. He blinked back tears and looked around as best he could without moving his head. He was where he had fallen, at the end of the bridge, and there were dead dwarfs all around him. Old Harn lay not far off, face down in a pool of drying pitch, his white beard stuck to it. Aurik…

  Aurik was gone!

  Skaari turned his head to be sure. The thane’s son’s helmet was there, dented and dirtied, but his body and Grudge Ender no longer lay beside it. What had happened? Were the cursed goblins abusing Aurik’s corpse in some way?

  The sound of approaching feet made him lie still and close his eyes again. Some goblins were coming his way, nattering and snarling at each other. He thought they were going to pass him by, but instead they stopped all around him. Had they seen him move his head? Were they about to kill him? He tensed, getting ready to leap up and take as many as he could with him—not many in his current state, he was certain—but then he felt his wrists and ankles gripped in hard, long-fingered hands, and he was lifted off the ground. He nearly struggled as the goblins carried him off, but fought the impulse down. If they were going to throw him on a pile somewhere, maybe he could slip away later.

  But what if they were going to throw him in the ravine? His heart thudded wildly at the thought. He opened one eye a slit and looked around, then breathed a silent sigh of relief. They were walking away from the chasm. He was being taken towards a wagon of dwarfish make, already half-full of dead dwarfs.

  The goblins swung him once, twice, thrice, then heaved him up onto the cart and he thudded down in the middle of the mound of corpses. He stifled another grunt of pain as his wounds crashed into the hard parts of the dead dwarfs’ armour. When the agony receded, he opened his eyes and looked around again.

  The four goblins were slouching away on another trip to the bridge. To their right, two other goblins were arguing vociferously. One of them wore a hooded black robe and carried a coiled whip, which he shook in the other goblin’s ugly face. Skaari remembered him. He was the one who had ordered the goblins to take his herd. The other goblin wore a wolfskin, and countless amulets and fetishes dangled from his neck and wrists. He waved his middle finger at the first goblin. There was a wart on it that glowed with a worrying green aura.

  Skaari gave the two goblins a closer look. He knew the one with the whip was a leader, and from the deference the other goblins paid the one in the wolfskin—edging around him and ducking their heads in passing—he surmised that he was important too. The two goblins’ garb suggested they were from two different tribes—night goblins and forest goblins, just like he and the scouts had seen at the camp—and it looked like the two sides were fighting now.

  He raised his head a little more and looked further afield. Aye. The night goblins were gathering on the left side of the path to the bridge, while the spider-riding forest goblins were bunched together on the right side, and both sides were shooting squinty glances at the other. And there were hundreds of the little, savages standing about, all armed to the teeth. It seemed that Aurik’s last stand at the bridge had hardly put a dent in their numbers at all. The hold was going to face the full brunt of the goblin attack, unless…

  Unless the rivalry between them could be used to the dwarfs’ advantage. If Skaari could get back to the hold and tell Thane Thunderbrand, he might be able to use the knowledge to make the goblins fight one another and weaken their attack. He had to try it. It might mean the difference between victory and defeat.

  Skaari returned his attention to the area directly around the wagon. The goblins had left it near the barracks house, the ponies tied to the hitching post outside it. He couldn’t see any goblins close by. If he could slip off and get behind the house, then he could climb up into the scrub above the path and escape. He only hoped that, wounded as he was, he could move faster than goblins on the march.

  He looked back towards the bridge. The four goblins were just picking up another corpse. He had to move now. He rolled over onto his chest, moving closer to the tail-gate, then paused, listening for sounds of alarm. None. He checked around again. The four goblins were carrying the dead dwarf his way, but they were talking amongst themselves and not looking toward the wagon. None of the other groups seemed to be paying any attention either, and the two leaders were so wrapped up in their argument he could have stood up and whistled a dwarfen marching song and they wouldn’t have noticed. Now was the time.

  Skaari rolled over again, and dropped off the tail board onto the ground. The impact almost made him cry out, but he bit it back and rolled quickly under the wagon. Still no alarm. Good.

  The head of the wagon was closer to the house. He crawled the length of it, squirming under the front axle until he was just behind the ponies. They whickered nervously and he murmured hurried reassurances. It wouldn’t do for them to bolt and pull away, leaving him crouching and exposed on the ground looking foolish. They settled down and he eyed his next step.

  There was a rain barrel beside the barracks house, only three quick paces away. Perfect. He got his legs under him, braced, and ran for it.

  On his first step, a goblin stepped out of the house, slipping one of surgeon Eorik’s scalpels through its belt for a dagger. It squawked as Skaari rushed past. Skaari cursed and kept running, limp-hopping around the rain barrel and down the side of the house. Of all the terrible luck! But perhaps if he could draw it off and kill it, none of the others would notice.

  The goblin scrambled after him, shrilling curses. Skaari dodged around the back of the house, feeling at his belt. He still had his dagger. He drew it and whipped around.

  The goblin careened around the corner at top speed and crashed into him. Skaari jabbed with his dagger, ripping up under the goblin’s ribs. It shrieked in pain.

  “Shut up, you little cannibal!” Skaari cursed and stabbed again.

  The goblin fell back, mewling and holding its guts. Skaari cut its throat and it fell to the ground, silent at last. But not soon enough. Skaari looked up as he heard questioning jabbers coming from the front of the house. They had heard. Now they were coming. Time to run.

  He looked around. There was a little yard behind the barracks house, with a bit of garden and a small forge for repairing weapons. At the back of that w
as the wall of the pass, a steep slope of jagged rock and gnarled scrub. That was his best bet. There wasn’t a goblin alive that could outclimb a dwarf, or outfight him on a sheer face.

  Skaari limped to the slope and started to pull himself up the jumble of boulders that littered the base of it. His ribs and wounded limbs complained loudly, and he moved at only a fraction of his normal speed, but he forced himself on.

  Before he’d climbed more than six feet, goblins swarmed around the back of the house from both sides, screeching and pointing. Skaari kept climbing, but risked a look back. A few of them were running forward to climb after him, but most just howled and shook their fists. Unfortunately, another few were drawing little double curved bows and fitting arrows to the strings. He cursed. He had forgotten about arrows. He was done for.

  He climbed on regardless, his back tightening with anticipation, waiting for the first arrow to pin him to the rocks. But then there was a commanding shout.

  Skaari looked back again. The goblin with the whip was stepping into the yard, barking at all the others and waving its hands. Skaari couldn’t understand what it was saying, but its words had an effect on the other greenskins. Though they looked less than happy about it, they lowered their bows and stepped back.

  Skaari stared. Was the goblin leader letting him go? Was it some sort of trick? Then he saw another goblin take out a leather sling and pick up a rock.

  Skaari cursed and climbed faster as the goblin fitted the rock into the sling and began to whirl it around its head. They were going to knock him off the cliff face, but not kill him. Why? What did they want with him? What were they going to do?

  The whirring stopped and something hard cracked him on the side of the head, right where the cannon-ball had struck him before. The world went black at the edges. His fingers relaxed and slipped from their holds. He was falling. It was going to hurt when he hit.