The Great Betrayal Read Online Free

at first, but the ranks of the Chaos host had thinned. Where before a seemingly impenetrable tide of monsters had barred the way for the elves and dwarfs to reach the feathered sorcerer and the bloated lord, now there was a gap. A slim gap. A slim hope, but hope it still was.
    The dwarf’s plan was straightforward. Use them both as bait.
    His thane-kings and the other lordlings of the elves too had argued against it but Snorri would not be swayed, nor Malekith who saw its virtues at once. The elf’s dragon had brought them high above the battlefield to the Fist of Gron where all the foul daemons of Ruin could see and taste them. Eager to kill the elf prince and the dwarf king, the horde would flock to them, but in their eagerness would leave their daemonic masters less well protected.
    ‘Your ruse has worked, old friend.’
    ‘Of course it worked, I am a dawi!’
    Malekith laughed again, but this time it was deep and hearty.
    ‘Fighting at your side, I do not think I have ever been more at peace,’ he said, flashing the dwarf a warm smile.
    Snorri frowned at him.
    ‘You find your solace in the oddest of places,’ he shrugged, ‘but then you are an elgi and as strange to me as the sky.’
    Snorri grew stern. Despite this relative victory, the plan would only succeed if their armies held and could maintain the breach until he and Malekith arrived to lead them. The High King gazed out from the Fist of Gron, trying to gauge how the dwarfs were faring. They were fighting hard, thane-kings leading their warriors from the slopes of the distant mountain into the heart of the daemonic hosts and their beasts. On the vast left flank, lightning speared from runic anvils in their dozens and turned the monsters into ash. Immense pillars of flame rolled out from other runic war engines. Daemons and beasts caught up in the conflagration were swiftly rendered to charred hunks of tainted meat. Earth trembled as runesmiths in their hundreds called forth powerful quakes that opened up great chasms in the ground, swallowing scores of monsters before closing ominously.
    Behind the stout phalanxes of dwarf warriors leading the attack, Snorri saw giants. Creations of stone and metal, these ancient golems were slow to rise and quick to slumber. Only the most powerful runelords could rouse them. Like the anvils, they were magical machineries fashioned by the supreme artifice of rune masters. The craft to forge them anew was lost, but the gronti-duraz lived still. It meant ‘enduring giant’ in the dwarf tongue.
    On this great day when elf and dwarf stood together united in purpose, they had woken in their hundreds. The sight brought a tear to the old dwarf king’s eye. It was to be their final battle, for the magic to animate them was getting harder and harder to craft, seeping away like a draught through a slowly widening crack.
    From the craggy flanks of Karag Vlak a horn blast resounded, seizing the High King’s attention. Ballistae gathered in serried ranks turned the air dark with flights of bolts the size of lances. Farther up the mountainside, mangonels and onagers hurled stones. Chunks of rock etched with runes of banishment and daemon-killing crashed and rolled amongst the horde. Beasts and daemons alike were crushed and skewered by the deadly rain pouring from the ranks of war machines.
    Though monsters of every stripe had been unleashed against the armies of Snorri and Malekith, it was a plague-ridden tide that faced the dwarfs. Even high above the battlefield, Snorri could see hundreds of horned and hunchbacked daemons. Tallymen, he had heard them named. One-eyed, bloated bellied, the stench of their decaying flesh assailed his nostrils all the way up on the Fist of Gron.
    Lesser, maggot-ridden beasts loped alongside them in their thousands. Some had once been men. Slug-like beasts with gaping maws like cages of acidic slime slithered behind them. Daemonic tallymen rode on the backs of the beasts, rusted bells ringing at their