The Great Betrayal by Nick Kyme Read Free Book Online

was Angazuf , which Snorri had told him meant ‘sky iron’. In banishing the daemon it had been ruined.
    Snorri looked sad to see its runic strength diminish; the hammer was older than some hold halls.
    ‘What else has been lost to this fight, I wonder?’ he uttered, suddenly melancholy.
    Around them the battle was ending. With the defeat of the Chaos hordes, order was returning. Life would return in time, but this would forever be a tainted place. For the touch of Chaos is a permanent taint that cannot ever be entirely removed.
    Above them, Karag Vlak was quiescent, its anger spent like that of the dwarf king.
    Around the mountain and before it, elves and dwarfs lay dead in their thousands.
    But it was for his friend that Malekith’s eyes betrayed the most concern.
    There was rheum around Snorri’s eyes. Age lines threaded his face, gnarled skin and lesions showed on his hands. Like his rune hammer, he was broken. The elf wondered just how much this last fight had taken out of the dwarf, how badly Alkhor had really wounded him.
    ‘Don’t look so afraid, I am not dead yet,’ growled the king.
    Silent as statues, his thronebearers and hearthguard were grim-faced.
    Malekith smiled, though it was affected with melancholy. He looked around at the battlefield, at the dying and the dead.
    ‘We have paid a great price for this,’ said the elf, finally answering the dwarf’s question. ‘Here we witness the passing of a golden age, I fear.’
    He watched the elves and dwarfs as they fought together to cleanse the battlefield of the last remnants of resistance. Some had already begun to celebrate victory together and exchanged tokens and talismans. For many, it would be the last time they would see one another.
    So different and yet common purpose had formed a strong bond.
    ‘But perhaps we can usher in a new one. Either way, let us hope this is an end to hell and darkness.’ He added, without conviction, ‘To war and death.’
    ‘Aye,’ Snorri agreed, ‘it is the province of more youthful kings, I think.’
    Malekith nodded, lost in introspection.
    ‘I had expected more joy, elfling,’ said the dwarf. He leaned forwards to clap Malekith’s armoured shoulder. ‘And you say that we are dour.’
    The elf laughed, but his eyes were far away.
    ‘We should feast,’ he said at last, returning to the present and leaving his troubles for now, ‘and honour this triumph.’
    ‘Back at Karaz-a-Karak, we will do just that, young elfling.’ Some colour had returned to the dwarf’s cheeks at the prospect of beer and meat. ‘And yet you still seem moribund. What is it, Malekith? What ails you?’
    ‘Nothing…’ The elf’s eyes were fixed again on a dark horizon, his mind on the remembered fire that had ravaged his body. It felt familiar somehow. ‘Nothing, Snorri,’ he said again, more lucidly. ‘It can wait. It can certainly wait.’

CHAPTER ONE
    Rat Catching
    The tunnel was dank and reeked of mould. Darkness thicker than pitch was threaded with the sound of hidden, chittering things. Far from the heat of the forges, here in the lost corridors of the underway, monsters roamed. Or so Snorri hoped.
    ‘Bring it closer, cousin. I caught a whiff of their stink up ahead.’
    Morgrim held the lantern up higher. Its light threw clawing shadows across the walls, illuminating old waymarker runes that had long since fallen into disrepair.
    ‘Karak Krum,’ uttered the older dwarf, his face framed in the light. A ruddy orange glow limned his black beard, making it look as if it were on fire. ‘The dwarfs there are long since dead, cousin. No one has ventured this deep into the Ungdrin Ankor for many, many years.’
    Snorri squinted as he looked at Morgrim over his shoulder.
    ‘Scared, are you? Thought you Bargrums had spines of iron, cousin.’
    Morgrim bristled. ‘Aye, we do!’ he said, a little too loudly.
    Two dwarfs, standing alone in a sea of black with but a small corona of lamplight to enfold them, waited. After