“Then we use it,” Kaelen said. “Twenty of us. Dwarfs, men, whatever souls are mad enough to follow. We bypass his army and shatter the ritual. Without the Rotfather’s blessing, his followers will turn on each other within a day.”
Tomorrow, he would break the count. Or it would break him. return of reckoning
Sir Roland snatched the parchment, read it, and laughed—a bitter, cracking sound. “Thirty days? We will be lucky to hold thirty hours if the Rotfather marches.” “Then we use it,” Kaelen said
Kaelen touched the rune-brand on his forearm—the mark of the Slayer’s Oath, though he had never taken it. Not formally. His shame was not failure, but survival. Three winters ago, in the tunnels beneath the Howling Heights, he had watched his entire Stonebeard throng fall to a Bloodthirster’s axe. He had been the last, trapped under a collapse, listening to the daemon’s laughter fade as it turned toward the surface. We bypass his army and shatter the ritual
He should have died. Instead, he clawed free three days later, half-blind, raving, his axe notched beyond repair. The dwarfs of Karak Kadrin had given him a new axe and a new name: Drengbarazi —the living dead.
For a long moment, the Witch Hunter said nothing. Then her lips curled into something that was almost a smile. “His attention is fixed on the shrine of the Raven God in the lower crypts. He believes a great ritual will be complete by the next new moon. His warriors guard the upper halls, but the tunnels beneath—” She traced a line in the air. “There is a way. A flooded sewer passage that leads to his sanctum. No one uses it. The smell alone is a garrison.”
