Honourkeeper Read online

  Malbeth interceded quickly when he realised what the raven-haired elf was trying to do.

  ‘I think what my kinsmen means,’ began the ambassador, ‘is we are unfamiliar with dwarf belief. For instance, what is this gate you speak of? It is not a literal gate, like the entrance to this grand chamber, I assume?’

  ‘No,’ said Morek, looking daggers at Lethralmir, before switching his attention to Malbeth. ‘Gazul’s Gate bars the way to the dwarf afterlife and the Halls of the Ancestors,’ he explained. ‘Every dwarf must face those gates and balance his deeds before Gazul himself. Even if they are found worthy, and pass into the Halls, there is no guarantee they will remain so. The deeds of descendents can throw their place at the table of Grungni into jeopardy. So it is with some,’ Morek said, looking askance and angry at Rugnir, ‘where their ancestors will wander lost until amends have been made for dishonourable behaviour.’

  ‘Surely, though, this dwarf, if he is indeed enduring purgatory, must have brought it upon himself?’ Lethralmir pressed with a sly wink at Arthelas, who was enjoying the show sat alongside him.

  ‘Kraggin was honourable and good,’ Morek asserted passionately, ‘How dare you besmirch his name!’

  ‘Please, please,’ said Malbeth, ‘Lethralmir meant no offence, I’m sure. Did you?’ he added, looking meaningfully at the dark-haired elf who returned his stern gaze with a look of indifference.

  ‘No, of course not. I would never besmirch a dwarf,’ he replied at length.

  Morek’s face darkened and he stood and turned to Bagrik, who was similarly unimpressed.

  ‘My lord, I regret I must leave the King’s Table to attend to my many duties,’ said the hearth guard captain.

  Bagrik was grave as he regarded the elves. It seemed the hope that his guests would live up to the honour of being at his table had been dashed. He sighed deeply, mastering his annoyance. Bagrik knew his hearth guard captain’s views – they were not so dissimilar to his own – but he also had no desire to fuel the fire of Morek’s anti-elf sentiment. He had promised Brunvilda he would try, and made a similar pledge to Kandor. As king of the hold, he would keep to his word. Yet with Morek in such a foul mood, he had little recourse but to give him leave.

  ‘Granted,’ Bagrik said at last.

  Morek bowed swiftly, firing a dark glare in Lethralmir’s direction before he left the Great Hall.

  Korhvale had not spoken a word since the elves had entered the Great Hall. He had watched all within the chamber diligently, though, his gaze lingering on Arthelas more than most. Only when she had noticed him looking did he turn away, abashed. He took greater care when watching her after that. It only served to exacerbate the discomfort he already felt. The White Lion did not like the dank halls of earth, the sense of the mountain on top of him. It felt like a threat waiting to make good on itself. Instead, he longed for the wide open spaces of Chrace, his homeland: to feel the breeze upon his face, the warmth of the sun against his skin, and to drink in the scents of the wild.

  Korhvale, at his heart, was the beast he wore as a pelt across his shoulders. Wild and untamed, he desired to roam the forests and mountains of Ulthuan. This which he now endured, fettered within a cage of stone, was anathema to him.

  ‘He was always highly strung, that one,’ remarked a dwarf sitting alongside him. Korhvale saw he had a thick black beard and dark circles ringed his eyes. He had rough-looking hands, scarred and calloused. Clearly, he was a warrior. He wore a dark grey tunic and pinched a pipe between his lips as he offered a hand to the White Lion.

  ‘Grikk Ironspike, Captain of the King’s Ironbreakers.’

  Korhvale shook hands with the dwarf, though the tactile gesture felt strange to him.

  ‘Korhvale,’ he muttered, uncertain in his use of Khazalid to say much more.

  ‘I get the feeling that grand feasts are not for you, elgi,’ said Grikk, struggling for conversation himself.

  ‘No,’ Korhvale replied.

  ‘Me neither,’ Grikk agreed. ‘I would rather be alone in the Ungrin Ankor, the tunnels beneath the hold,’ he explained. ‘There are many beasts that inhabit them – that is true – but I know what is to be done about beasts,’ he added with a glint in his eye.

  Korhvale shrugged, unsure how to respond.

  ‘It is at grand gatherings that I am at a loss,’ the dwarf said.

  ‘Yes,’ the elf replied.

  ‘Seems you and me both,’ the ironbreaker muttered, after an uneasy silence, and folded his arms as he supped on his pipe.

  A great gong echoed metallically throughout the Great Hall, struck by Haggar. It heralded the end of the feast and the onset on the entertainments provided by the dwarfs. The reverberant sound came as a welcome relief to both races – certainly Bagrik was glad of it. This Ithalred had proven himself every inch the arrogant warrior-prince that Bagrik supposed he would be. He wondered, as a veritable throng of servants issued into the grand chamber to clear plates and platters, whether or not it had been a wise move to listen to Kandor’s counsel regarding the elves. The merchant guildmaster had insisted that a trade alliance between their peoples would bring about much prosperity, that the elves would be all too willing dwarf-friends in light of the troubles that beset their own shores. So far, though, Bagrik had seen little to encourage him and would only bite his tongue so long.

  The dwarf servants worked quickly, taking the remnants of the feast back to the hold’s kitchens and lesser clan halls. As he watched them troop out with the giant broth cauldron and the fire-pit, Bagrik felt himself being raised aloft on his throne by his hearth guard. The King’s Table was moved from his path by a group of clansdwarfs, and he, together with Brunvilda and Nagrim, was carried to the edge of the stone platform overlooking the sunken floor of the vast hall. The other tables, the Seat of the Wise and that of the Masters and other dwarf nobility, had already been taken away to be stored. Below, a similar arrangement was taking place as a large open plaza started to appear where before there had been many tables.

  The ledges that delineated the room were soon occupied, more dwarf servants providing plump velvet cushions with wooden backboards for the venerable or important. In short order, the Great Hall took on the aspect of a roofed amphitheatre, the stone plaza a natural focal point for the attention of the surrounding elves and dwarfs.

  Once the transformation was complete, Bagrik turned again to Haggar who stood at the ready by the great gong in one corner of the hall. At the king’s command, Haggar sounded the gong again and the hall, which up until then had been filled with a hubbub of low voices, fell silent. Bagrik then signalled to his banner bearer to begin the entertainments.

  ‘Grikk Ironspike, Captain of the King’s Ironbreakers!’ Haggar declared, his voice resonating around the room like a clarion call.

  The black-bearded dwarf came forward from the shadows at the edge of the Great Hall, approached his king and bowed on one knee, his clenched fists at either side of his body and touching the floor in the regal fashion of the dwarfs. He was no longer wearing his dark grey tunic, instead stripped to the waist and wearing leather breeches with a skirt of mail, bronze vambraces clapped around his wrists.

  ‘Tromm, Grikk of the Ironspike clan,’ said Bagrik to his captain. ‘What feats have you for us?’

  ‘Axe hurling, my liege,’ Malbeth heard the ironbreaker reply, ‘and anvil lifting.’

  Sat next to Kandor, the elf ambassador watched as clansdwarfs marched onto the plaza of stone in the middle of the Great Hall carrying, first, a weapons rack of dwarf hand axes and then a series of wooden stakes on top of which had been rammed the heads of greenskins. Malbeth swallowed back his disgust at the grisly targets, with their lolling tongues and glassy-eyed stares. Ragged skin hung from their necks, together with strips of desiccated flesh caked with dried blood.

  They were repellent things, the elf decided, worrying what Ithalred was thinking, who wore a perpetual grimace as he regarded the decapitated heads. As he fretted over his prince, Malbeth
also caught the venomous gaze of Lethralmir, who was clearly enjoying the spectacle for all the wrong reasons. Holding the elf ambassador’s gaze, the raven-haired blade-master whispered something into Arthelas’s ear, who laughed quietly. Malbeth noticed Korhvale, too, his attention rapt, but not on Grikk who was approaching the weapon’s rack for his first axe, but rather on Arthelas.

  That will not end well, Malbeth thought, and resolved to speak with the White Lion later.

  Fraught with concern and misgivings, he gave a false smile to Kandor who gestured for him to watch, as the display was about to begin in earnest.

  Grikk was lathered in sweat, a line of split greenskin skulls and upturned anvils testament to his endeavours. The dwarfs had cheered as one with each lifted weight, with every orc or goblin head struck and maimed. Grikk never missed, not once, and no anvil, however large, could defeat him. Conversely, the elves seemed not to know what to do and were largely silent throughout, only clapping politely at the end as the ironbreaker captain bowed before his king and then his audience.

  Haggar found the elgi to be strange creatures, who lacked the ready camaraderie of his kin. How could they fail to appreciate the skills of the ironbreaker captain? Grikk was one of the finest warriors in the hold, next only to Morek. Would that he, Haggar, be so great… For a moment, the dwarf’s mind drifted to a time before, to a shame he must atone for. He eyed the banner of Ungor, resting in its place behind the throne of King Bagrik and felt the dishonour of that day anew.

  Thagri, he said to himself, will your dishonour ever linger over me?

  So deep was Haggar’s remembrance that he very nearly missed the order of his king to announce the next entertainment.

  Hurriedly, Haggar thrashed the gong and cried, ‘The Miners’ Guild Choir, led by Jodri Broadbellow!’

  Malbeth watched as in filed the dwarf choristers, decked in their finest attire, the bronze buttons on their brown tunics gleaming, black metal mining caps polished to a dull lustre. Some wore tiny bells around their fingers, or had cloth tassels bound to their ankles and wrists. There were musicians, too, carrying instruments: large, brass horns curved to resemble coiling serpentine monsters; fat animal bladders, fitted with an array of copper pipes that sprang out at awkward-looking angles; orc-skin drums, rolled out onto the stone plaza; and a strange-looking barrel organ with yellowed-bone keys at one end and a metal turning crank at the other.

  It was as bizarre an assemblage as Malbeth had ever seen, and he had been to the dwarf kingdoms before. However odd this array of dwarfs, though, the sight could not have prepared him for what happened next. A dour bass note began the proceedings, the head chorister singing a cappella at first, before his fellows joined him in complimentary baritone and tenor. As they sang, some ditty about firkins and a goblin’s rump, as far as Malbeth could discern, the musicians struck up their instruments.

  A horrific din assailed his senses, and the elf ambassador shut his eyes at first in the hope that the dwarfs had merely mistuned. After a few more seconds of the auditory torture, it became clear that they had not and, grimacing, Malbeth opened his eyes. Puffing cheeks red with effort, the dwarfs pumped out a sound akin to a throttled horse or bone scraped down metal. The elf ambassador noticed King Bagrik seemed to be enjoying himself, as did the rest of the dwarfs watching, slapping his thigh as the miners danced with strange, squatting motions, bells and tassels shaking with every syncopated movement.

  Malbeth gritted his teeth, trying desperately at the same time to smile, and prayed to Isha, the elven god of mercy, that it would be over soon.

  Bagrik stopped drumming the beat of the choristers’ drums when he saw the expression on Ithalred’s face. The elf prince looked as if he was in profound agony, his features screwed up so tight they might never revert back to their usual state of indifference.

  Hurriedly, the dwarf king got the attention of his banner bearer and urged him vigorously to strike the gong.

  After a moment’s indecision, Haggar did as he was bidden, the reverberating sound of the gong cutting the performance of the Miners’ Guild Choir abruptly short.

  ‘Enough!’ Bagrik snarled.

  Confused, the miners stopped part way through the first verse of their ditty with a belated toot and crump of a pipe and accordion. Bagrik waved away the looks of the nonplussed miners agitatedly, and they tramped off in disconsolate fashion with a discordant clamour of instruments and much grumbling.

  The king then turned swiftly to Haggar, his gaze questioning as to what was next. The dwarf merely shrugged, looking slightly panicked at the sudden interruption in the schedule.

  Malbeth came to his rescue.

  ‘Perhaps, you would allow us to grace you with a taste of our native culture,’ said the elf ambassador, to Haggar’s profound relief.

  Bagrik muttered something in response, but then Kandor nodded, similarly relieved.

  ‘Arthelas,’ said the elf, turning to the pale maiden at Prince Ithalred’s side, ‘would you grace our generous hosts with a song of Eataine?’

  Haggar saw the elf maiden nod demurely as she rose from her seat, and felt his face flush at her elegance and ethereal beauty. Never had he seen such a creature in all his days. So thin, so brittle, she was like the wind, the reflected light of sun against water, the glitter of gold. She glided down to the plaza, two elf harpists drifting silently to her side as she took her position in the middle of the plaza. The magnificence of the Great Hall seemed dulled in her radiant presence and all within fell silent as she began.

  A lilting melody filled the air as Arthelas sang, a haunting, ephemeral sound that seemed to drift in and out of being, as the harpists plucked their instruments in accompaniment. Though he did not understand the words, Haggar felt warmth and a curious sense of lightness spread over his body as he heard them. The effect was bewitching. Time slowed and ceased to have meaning. It was like there was only her in the grand chamber, alone and singing just for Haggar. Her gaze connected with the dwarf’s and the burden of his past faded away. Not even a lingering memory remained, there was only Arthelas.

  When the song ended and she bowed her head in supplication before the crowd, stunned silence reigned. Haggar wiped tears from his eyes and breathed again. When he saw Arthelas collapse, his heart nearly stopped in his armoured chest.

  Korhvale was the first to come to Arthelas’s aid, vaulting down from his perch on the stone ledge, landing deftly, and at her side in a moment. Ithalred was close behind the White Lion, waving the harpists and other elves aside as he took her from his bodyguard and cradled her in his arms, before whispering softly in his sister’s ear. She roused, opening her eyes slowly.

  ‘What is wrong with her?’ asked Malbeth, the elf ambassador having followed after his prince. A small cluster of other concerned onlookers had gathered, elves and dwarfs both.

  ‘Is everything well, shall I summon the priests of Valaya?’ asked Kandor, a little breathless.

  ‘What goes on down there?’ called Bagrik from his seat, the dwarf king unwilling to hobble down to see for himself.

  ‘We have no need of your priests!’ snapped Ithalred beneath his breath, as he flashed a scowl at the dwarf merchant.

  ‘All is well, my friend,’ said Malbeth, stepping between the prince and Kandor, and placing his hand on the dwarf’s shoulder. ‘Arthelas is merely tired from our journey. She feels it more than the rest of us,’ he explained.

  Kandor nodded slowly, catching a glimpse of Ithalred past Malbeth as he angrily summoned his servants, but did not appear reassured.

  ‘All is well,’ Malbeth said again much louder for the benefit of the entire assembly. ‘The Lady Arthelas is only tired.’

  ‘We are all tired,’ came the voice of Lethralmir, his tone dark, as he emerged through the crowd like a viper. ‘These… games,’ he added, ‘have gone on long enough.’

  Malbeth was about to say something when Ithalred got up, carrying Arthelas in his arms.

  ‘Lethralmir is right,’ said the prince
in elvish. ‘This ridiculous display is over. I have endured enough of it.’

  ‘But my lord, I’m sure if Arthelas returns to her–’ Malbeth began.

  ‘It is over, Malbeth,’ Ithalred snapped, his tone brooking no argument.

  The elf ambassador, halted in mid-flow, closed his mouth and nodded his assent. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Lethralmir quietly smirking to himself.

  ‘Malbeth,’ Ithalred said curtly, ‘tell our hosts we are retiring for the evening.’ At that he stalked out of the Great Hall, Korhvale, his face awash with concern, with him. A clutch of servants came after them, the muttered grumblings of the dwarfs left in their wake.

  Lethralmir gave a series of sharp commands in elvish at which the warriors got to their feet and followed the prince with the rest of the servants. The raven-haired blade-master was about to move into step behind them when Malbeth grasped his arm.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he hissed, angrily.

  The raven-haired elf smiled darkly, ‘Keeping my dignity and the dignity of our race,’ he said.

  ‘Khaine damn you, Lethralmir.’

  The elf sniffed, as if he found Malbeth’s remark amusing. ‘You first,’ he countered, looking down meaningfully at his arm where the ambassador still gripped it.

  ‘Do you really want to make a scene before our generous hosts?’ Lethralmir goaded him after a few seconds, and looked back down at his arm again. ‘Remember that temper of yours…’

  Malbeth let him go.

  ‘What is going on?’ asked Kandor, as the elves were trooping out of the Great Hall.

  Malbeth turned, having recovered his composure.

  ‘Tiredness has got the better of us all, it seems,’ he replied weakly, then raised his voice to address the king.

  ‘Regrettably, your majesty, we must retire for the evening. Prince Ithalred is exhausted, and must rest from his journey. He asked me to convey his appreciation at the fine feast and entertainments you so graciously provided, however.’

  King Bagrik said something beneath his breath, clearly unconvinced, and Malbeth took that as his cue to leave.