“Cranneg laid in wait for two days with the nautilus. As soon as our fleet entered the harbor, he sank the iron galley and all on board. Once this was done the vargs were as good as dead. We punched a hole through the port and the crews got to proper work. Every manling we didn’t kill at the harbor we pushed back until they entrenched in the longhall. We didn’t waste time digging them out, the irondrakes set the place on fire. Par for the course.”
Kala Kadrisdottir, from the throng of Kraka Ravnsvake, waited for comments but the thane and the runelord remained quiet. They towered from their stone chairs and the audience chamber seemed even vaster for the fact the three dwarfs were alone. A dozen empty chairs added to her sense of futility. The council had not bothered.
“We all knew they would be no peace offering. The very idea didn’t deserve consideration, but what came next I had never seen before. Cranneg’s crew dragged the women and children they could find in sight of the longhall. They took children by the feet and smash their heads against the ground, then beat their mothers to death with the corpses, daring the vargs to come out rather than hide behind their whelps. Some took them on that challenge. The others burned.”
She stopped a second time. All she heard was Lorgan’s hook hitting the armrest.
“The vargs were left to rot. The crews pillaged the place but Cranneg’s people wouldn’t even touch the gold. They sent for gallons of some alchemical substance stowed on the ships and spilled it all over the ground, in the fields and the harbor. Vermin has no right to breed, they told us. That day we learned Cranneg declared a grudge against all norses for the crime of procreating.”
She stopped a third time as if taking her breath, in truth to spy some reaction, anything, from those listening to her. They said nothing.
“We kept going for months, up and down the coast and deep into the mountains. We spared no one. Even the manling slaves Cranneg deemed beyond redemption, their weakness an insult. He poured crowns down jarl’s throats. He sewed warriors inside a whale’s carcass and dropped it overboard to deny them death in combat. The vargs fought like beasts, but I don’t think they were ready for what Cranneg had in store for them. My crew certainly wasn’t. We marched inland for days, took hundreds of prisoners with us. He fed them to each other to save rations, then set them on fire and unleashed them on settlements that thought themselves safe. When a crippled witch swore the Carrion Lord would take us all to his rotten garden, he said his followers should lead the way, so we buried everyone alive, leaving only their hands sticking out like flowers. We spilled that substance everywhere. By the time we returned to the fleet the soil was a dozen different colors, the land was dead, the harbor smelled like acid and cinder. It… it reminded me of the skaven.”
She expected anger. She expected to be rebuked. She expected some kind of reaction.They said nothing.
So she continued. She spoke of a campaign that cared less about vengeance than torment, of the dull cruelty that settled in the end. When she described dwarfs cutting fat from living prisoners to dress their own wounds, she realized there was nothing more to add.
“I fear Cranneg is insane.”
She finally said it, and how bizarre it seemed to level such an accusation against a fellow dwarf. Even now, even against one she never wanted to see again.
Cranneg. Cranneg No-one. The first time Kala saw him he looked like a statue covered in fur. A face carved like the fjords and crisscrossed with scars, a steam-powered claw replacing his hand, an exoskeleton keeping his leg functional; her captain seemed like he was barely holding together. Doubt became respect when she learned he never removed his helmet since the day he lost a piece of skull fighting the hordes of Valmir Aesling. The crews admired him, followed him deep into norse waters to cross out debts long overdue. Dwarfs sailing from grudge to grudge.
And erase grudges they had. Kala wished she could hold on to those images. Berserkers killing werekins with their bare hands and laughing as death took them to their forefathers. Hammers toppling unholy shrines, witches praying in vain in the face of honest steel, the icons of the Ancestor Gods towering over burning fanes to deamons. The nautilus ascending from the depths like a sword, like Gazul himself stabbing through the ice to drag the dragonships into his realm. Even now a part of her kept whispering they had only killed savages.
Vermin has no right to breed.
Why then did she shiver when she remembered Cranneg? Why, as they made their way through dark waters, did she begin to feel a sinister aura hovering around her captain?
Maybe because he killed with the same coldness he ordered tortures, the same way he turned the land into a waste, ruined beyond any need, useless to dwarfs or men. Maybe because with the exception of a grey beard bristling in the frozen wind, he looked and acted as an automaton, scars and prosthetics that once spoke of courage now adding to an otherness she had never felt. Never sleeping, forever on the hunt, he ordered and she saw his followers obey with the same indifference. Deprived of joy, anger, pride, or anything. And the crews partaking.
“I have no more to say. May the Ancestors stand witness that my words are chiseled with the same care I chisel jewels. For years I’ve killed those who serve the Void, I’ve seen warriors cut loose, I’ve seen my kin cross into Gazul’s realm. I have never felt what I felt serving under Cranneg. How many expeditions has he commanded? How many have seen what I have? How many testimonies lie buried in Kraka Ravnsvake? I think this demands King Haarkon’ s attention.”
“No.”
The word came like an axe blow. She never held much hope they would see things her way. How could they, if she could barely explain it to herself? But she wasn’t expecting the scorn, not even from the thane. Old Harek looked almost asleep but Lorgan’s displeasure was enough to fill the chamber.
“There will be none of that”, the one-hand thane continued. “The king does not indulge every petition from every sailor. Cranneg has the council’s trust and his actions keep the norse threat at bay. Be thankful we spared you the sanction that would follow had you voiced these worries to Haarkon himself. You will not make him care for the way the mongrels die, nor us for that matter.”
“Their deaths are the least of my worries”.
“So I understand, but least is already too much it seems.” – He scanned her like she was a broken cog in need of replacement- “Maybe drowning in your own accusations is what you need. We could send you to Cranneg and let him choose your punishment, and that should be enough for you…”
“No! Not nearly enough!”
For a split second, Lorgan looked stunned, staring in disbelief as if the possibility of being interrupted had never crossed his mind. Then he started growling like a cauldron over the fire and his nature took over again. He rose, or rather jumped out of his seat, his beard bristling in anger and that told Kala all she needed about her prospective future with the fleet.
“I will drown on my own terms, thane! And you will not question my honor on this matter! I just broke faith with my captain and you will not scorn my reasons! What am I doing here?”
“Don’t you dare…”
“Answer the question!”
“You will keep silent!”
“Answer the question! What am I doing here? I was refused audience with the council, yet I find myself in your presence and not Cranneg’s! Why? Why venerable Harek deigns to listen to me? I was granted the right to speak so enlighten me, what did you expected to hear? Now that I’ve spoken do you expect me to keep quiet, to forget all that I’ve seen, all that I fear or suspect?”
She went no further. Lorgan opened his jaws like a bear to demand silence for a final time but before he could, the runelord struck the ground in displeasure - ever so slightly - with his staff. For an instant it felt like thunder had found its way inside the hold, a roar beyond even the thane’s notable capacities. Lorgan froze in place and Harek, the Bane of Crows, slowly rose from his chair.
“I deigned to listen because I so wished!” – The runlord never raised his voice but the words echoing through the chamber fell like anvils. - “And my verdict will depend on how much of my time I deem wasted here!”
He clutched an anvil staff on one hand; the other lay flat on the stone table as if he was ready to go right through it and shut them up if they kept arguing. Neither of them took him on that challenge.
“I left the forges to listen to you, child. And I heard clearly, old as I am. I could have stopped you some time ago but I let you “chisel” to your heart’s content. My pleasure, one artisan to another.”
The irony dissolved their belligerence like acid. In front of them stood the Bane of Crows, a norse tribe long extinct, wiped out in one night of carnage by the runelord now staring at her. Under that gaze she felt like a child, and Lorgan looked no better.
“Let it be clear, Kala Kadrisdottir, neither the king, nor his council, nor our irascible thane, owe you explanations, and certainly not I. Tradition bought you this audience, now I decide audacity bought you an answer. Do not expect it to be satisfying, answers rarely are. I cannot give you peace of mind, only different questions to sooth your own.” His eyes pierced through her, as if deciding one last time how much he was going to say.
And then Harek said words no dwarf wanted to hear.
“Karak Vlag”.