Thanquol's Doom by C. L. Werner

Author:C. L. Werner [Werner, C. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Warhammer
Published: 2012-01-09T03:41:28+00:00

The war-room of Karak Angkul was a frenzy of activity. King Logan and his generals were gathered about the massive granite table which dominated the centre of the room. Arrayed before their steely stares was a three-dimensional model of the dwarfhold and its labyrinth of tunnels, galleries and deeps. Scattered throughout the model were tiny iron statues of warriors, their chests each engraved with a different rune. The statues denoted the positions of the hold’s warriors.

“If there is trouble, it will come from the Sixth Deep,” Thane Arngar, one of the king’s generals, warned. He gestured with his hairy hand at a section of statues arranged in the twisting maze of mines beneath the Sixth Deep. “We should concede the mines and concentrate our troops in the Sixth Deep.”

“Concede the mines!” roared the heavy-set Guildmaster Borgo Flintheart, head of the Miners’ Guild. “Leave the thieving thaggoraki down there with our gold? You must be bozdok!”

“The ratkin don’t care about gold,” Thane Arngar told Borgo, “and the mines are too numerous to mount a proper defence down there. No, the plan must be to concede the mines and lure the ratkin into the Sixth Deep where we can bring the full weight of our warriors against them.”

“We can move some of the reserves from the upper deeps as well,” opined another of the generals. “There’s no sense keeping them where they’re not needed. The Overguard in the First Deep has to stay, of course, just in case the ratkin have stirred up some of the grobi tribes to cause us trouble.”

King Logan nodded as he considered the proposal. Weighing the benefits and dangers, he turned towards the one dwarf who had up until now been silent during the war council. “What do you think, Klarak?” he asked. “You’ve just come back from fighting these devils. Are they likely to strike out for the Sixth Deep if we pull out from the mines?”

Klarak Bronzehammer picked up one of the iron statues standing in a section of the mine shafts. Grimly, he set the statue down. “I would advise keeping the patrols in place and keeping the reserves where they are. It never pays to try to guess what ratkin will do. They are base, honourless creatures and their minds are as crooked as a goblin’s heart. We have two choices. We can try to strike them first, which means taking the fight to their warrens. To do that, we’d have to take almost every able-bodied dwarf in the hold.”

“And the other option?”

“We try to eliminate their leader,” Klarak stated firmly. “The ratkin are all cowards. They’ll lose heart if we can kill their leader before the battle even begins.”

“That’s why you want to keep the patrols down in the mines,” said Thane Arngar. “You are hoping they can spot this Grey Seer Thanquol before he can slither back to his own kind.”

Klarak nodded. “Eliminating Thanquol is vital if we are going to save Karak Angkul from destruction.”

Any further debate was interrupted by a disturbance at the door to the war-room.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.