The Great Betrayal by Nick Kyme Read Free Book Online Page A

what felt like an age, the echo of Morgrim’s truculence subsided and he added, ‘I am not scared, cousin, merely thinking aloud.’
    Snorri snorted.
    ‘And who do you think you are, oh brave and mighty dawi, Snorri Whitebeard reborn?’ said Morgrim. ‘You have his name but not his deeds, cousin.’
    ‘Not yet,’ Snorri retorted with typical stoicism.
    Grumbling under his breath, Morgrim traced the runic inscription of the waymarker with a leathern hand. There was dirt under the nails and rough calluses on the palms earned from hours spent in the forge. ‘Don’t you wonder what happened to them?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The dawi of Karak Krum.’
    ‘Either dead or gone. You think far too much, and act far too little,’ said Snorri, eyes front and returning to the hunt. ‘Here, look, some of their dung.’
    He pointed to a piled of noisome droppings a few inches from his booted foot.
    Wrinkling his nose, Morgrim scowled. ‘The reek of it,’ he said. ‘Like no rat I have ever smelled.’
    Snorri unhitched his axe from the sheath on his back. He also carried a dagger at his waist and kept it close to hand too. Narrow though it was, he didn’t want to be caught in the tunnel’s bottleneck unarmed.
    ‘Make a point of sniffing rats, do you, cousin?’ he laughed.
    Morgrim didn’t answer. He glanced one last time at the runic marker describing the way to Karak Krum. Passed away or simply moved on when the seams of gold and gems had run dry, dwarfs no longer walked its halls, the forges were silent. Merchants and reckoners from Karaz-a-Karak had brought tales of a glowing rock discovered by the miners of Krum. It had happened centuries ago, the story passed down by his father and his father before him. It was little more than myth now but the stark evidence of the ancient hold’s demise was still very real. Morgrim wondered what would happen if the same fate ever befell Karaz-a-Karak.
    Snorri snapped him out of his bleak reverie.
    ‘More light! This way, cousin.’
    ‘I hear something…’ Morgrim thumbed the buckle loose on his hammer’s thong and took its haft. Leather creaked in the dwarf’s grip.
    From up ahead there emanated a scratching, chittering noise. It sounded almost like speech, except for the fact that both Morgrim and Snorri knew that rats could do no such thing.
    Morgrim turned his head, strained his ear. ‘ Grobi ?’
    ‘This deep?’
    In this part of the underway, the tunnel was low and cramped as if it hadn’t been hewn by dwarfs at all. Such a thing was impossible, wasn’t it? Only dwarfs could dig the roads of the Ungdrin Ankor that connected all the holds of the Worlds Edge Mountains and beyond. And yet…
    ‘A troll, then?’
    Snorri looked back briefly. ‘One that talks to itself?’
    ‘I once encountered a troll with two heads that talked to itself, cousin.’
    Snorri shot Morgrim a dubious look.
    ‘No. Doesn’t smell right. Can tell a troll from a mile away. Its breath is like a latrine married to an abattoir.’
    ‘Reminds me of Uncle Fugri’s gruntis .’
    Snorri laughed, and they moved on.
    A larger cavern loomed ahead of the dwarfs, unseen but with the shape and angle of the opening suggesting a widening threshold, the scent of air and rat together with the sound-echo hinting at a vaulted ceiling. Dwarfs knew rock. They knew it because it was under their nails, on their tongues, in their blood and ever surrounded them.
    It was not merely a cavern ahead of the two dwarfs, where the tunnel met its end. It was large and it was a warren infested with rats.
    Snorri could hardly contain his excitement.
    ‘Are you ready, cousin?’ He brought up his axe level with his chest and clutched it two-handed. There was a spike on the end of it that could be used for thrusting, a useful weapon in a tight corner. For the last mile the dwarfs had been forced to stoop, and the prospect of standing straight was abruptly appealing. At least, it was to Morgrim.
    ‘As ready as I was when you