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The Ancestors’ Hall – Extract

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THE ANCESTORS’ HALL

A Grombrindal short story

David Guymer

King Aegil Throndiksson stared down into his cup of ale and tried to remember what it used to taste like. The cup was gold plated and as heavy as a chest filled with coins. Thickly drawn engravings depicted the likenesses of duardin he could only assume to be his ancestors, the runic inscriptions attesting to the wealth, age and skill of the cup’s bearer. He brought it to his large nose and sniffed, wetting the spidery bristles of white hair that tufted from both nostrils.

It had the faint, distinctly mineral tang of well water.

‘Do you remember the batch of Ancestors’ Reserve that Skalli Troggbeater opened for the Kungstrollen feast…?’ His words trailed off as he tried to recall exactly how many years ago it had been. It was like trying to guess the number of bricks in a wall. The answer was there in front of him, but the magnitude of it made his eyes glaze.

So, so many years ago.

It would have been before the closing of the gates. And before…

He shuddered, a faint memory settling on him like a thin layer of dust, then falling away.

It would have been before.

In the next seat but one, Finn Aegilsson was nevertheless nodding sagely, as if the recollection had been dropped into his head like honey into ale and was now spreading slowly to the edges. ‘Earthy nose,’ he muttered. ‘Strong hint of cherry.’ Life seemed to return to his age-dulled eyes as he recalled a time when the world had been better than it was now. ‘Aye. I remember it.’

Aegil still remembered his son as the hearty, ruddy-faced duardin he used to be, and often struggled to reconcile it with the living ancestor he saw now. A heavy shirt of silver rings hung off Finn’s wizened shoulders. The fingers wrapped around his ale cup were like those of a duardin skeleton, tough bones weighted down with rings, encrusted gemstones twinkling feebly in the glimlight. The years seemed to have caught up to both of them.

‘Duardin knew how to brew ale in those days,’ Finn said.

‘That they did,’ Aegil agreed.

‘Not like duardin now,’ said Finn.

Aegil nodded. ‘Not like now.’

The feasting hall was a grand space that went on forever, buttressed by columns carved into the broad likenesses of kings and queens, extending along both walls as though backwards in time. The most distant, Aegil could barely see at all. Fires roared in several dozen hearths, providing an ample display of wealth but curiously little warmth or comfort. Most of the light came from glimstones set into the ceiling. They turned the floor into a mosaic of muted colours, interspersed with great expanses of shadow. Every year, the stonemasons’ guild spent the time between Kungstrollen on widening the hall, installing additional fireplaces and further rows of tables to accommodate new arrivals. There was room now for several tens of thousands of duardin, but places had been set for barely a hundred. Their grey heads were scattered throughout the hall, the oceans of empty space between them only serving to make the lack of attendance all the more pronounced.

Was it not strange, Aegil wondered, to have so much space given to so few?

He turned to glance at the high-backed seat between himself and his son. The knotted wood of the seat back was aged and dark, and worn smooth as though by use, although Aegil knew that was impossible. It struck him as peculiarly wasteful, cruel even, to have such a fine chair beside him with no one to sit in it. Troubled by something that was not well enough defined to call a memory, he ran his hand along the armrest. At the end, he had the uncanny sense of another’s hand settling on top of his. He yanked his hand away more quickly than he had moved in decades, and almost knocked over his ale.

‘Father?’ said Finn.

Aegil frowned and returned his attention to his cup.

No duardin had ever occupied the third chair at the high table between himself and his son. He would have remembered.

Unnerved, and uncertain why, he took a sip of the ale.

It was not that it tasted bad so much as that it tasted of so little. Whatever qualities Troggbeater’s brews had once possessed, they had been dulled by repetition until they were as grey, flat and bland as the venerable brewery master himself.

He set down the ale cup with a heavy golden clank as, with a sleepy murmur of voices and a shuffling of seats, Lauffir Aldongi got stiffly to his feet.

The hold’s ambassador to the realms outside banged a wooden spoon on the side of his cup for quiet. The miners’ band fell silent, a last parp on the bagpipes echoing into the stillness of the hall. Aegil had to think consciously back over the last few hours to realise that he had not, in fact, even noticed they had been playing. Lauffir’s pale blue cloak shimmered as he stood up on his chair, the way a seam of crystal would shimmer in rock as the light around it moved. He had a beard of brittle white hair and a balding head. His face was kindly, but with a perennially perplexed expression as though he was consistently at odds with the state of the world he saw around him. A set of thickly lensed crystal glasses sat across his nose.

When had they all become so old?

Lauffir cleared his throat and Aegil immediately felt himself fade back out. He gave the same speech every year on Kungstrollen to welcome those who were newly arrived to their hall. Aegil did not need to listen to it again. He had heard it a thousand times before. The duardin spoke of a fastness at the confluence of two rivers, one of iron and one of tin. He spoke of clockwork beasts toiling in the mineral fields while duardin devoted their ingenuity and leisure to devising ever more intricate weapons for holding the forces of Chaos at bay. He spoke of a sun that rose and fell on rails, and spring rains that showered the great citadel with rare and exotic metals. Few were born in this place. Aegil knew of none, though he was certain he had read or heard accounts of it occurring in the distant past. Aegil had no strong recollections of his own former home. A vague sense of green life. Of song.

Listening to Lauffir speak, he wondered why any of them had ever left to come here.

He leant stiffly across the empty chair towards Finn, as though he had not moved in thousands of years and his bones had begun to fuse. ‘Do you remember–’

He stopped himself suddenly. It occurred to him that they seldom spoke these days unless it was to speak of the past. He leant back, trying to think of something more recent to talk about, and found that he could not.

It was only then he realised that Lauffir had stopped speaking.

The two elderly hammerers who ordinarily stood guard at the doors were taking the long, long walk through the aisles of feasting tables. A marginally less ancient duardin walked between them. He was wearing a heavy suit of fused gromril plate with a rustling skirt of mail hanging all the way to his ankles. His helmet was open, showing a craggy face with a full white beard. As was customary, he had surrendered his weapons at the door. Even so, he was an immense presence in his heavy armour, and creaked like one of the stone ancestors come to life as he bent one knee and bowed before the royal table.

The duardin in the hall were deathly silent and remained so. Aegil spent a long time wondering what was expected of him in this situation. It had been a long time since something unexpected had interrupted Kungstrollen. Or any other occasion for that matter.

‘You are… you are welcome at my… er… table.’

The duardin raised his gaze, but remained on one knee. Under the gromril brow of his helmet, he looked stern, but no less out of his depth than the king he addressed. ‘I am Soini, lord. Warden of the first gate.’

‘Warden… What became of Ralf Gundersson?’

The gatewarden shook his head. ‘I’ve been warden of the gate for as long as I remember.’

Aegil stared at the gatewarden for another long stretch of time.

Soini. Of course. He was not sure where the other name could have come from. He could not even recall now what that name had been.

Soini had watched over the first gate forever.

‘My king?’

Stirred from his reverie, Aegil gestured for the gatewarden to rise. He did so. ‘What brings you so far from your oathsworn duties?’

The gatewarden looked around him as though he had come all this way and could not now recall. ‘An… an arrival, my king.’

‘An…’

Aegil was suddenly conscious of the silence around him. The emptiness.

They had their feast. Skalli served his ale. Lauffir gave his speech. But only because it was tradition. There had not been a newcomer at the gate in… in… He could not remember how long.

Aegil took another slow draught of his ale while he considered. His first inclination was to banish Soini from the hall and return to the feast as the tradition of Kungstrollen demanded.

What was he supposed to do?

‘Where…?’ he began, hesitantly. ‘Where is this newcomer?’

The echoes of their footsteps disappeared into the vastness of the hall. The corridors were glorious, but empty. They were the echo of every duardin hall ever made, not a likeness perhaps, but a template, one that any duardin from any realm or time might look upon and recognise as home. Aegil looked upon it as one who has seen a million examples of wonder and now saw nothing at all.

‘What could be more appropriate on Kungstrollen,’ Lauffir tentatively suggested, as though expecting at any moment to be gainsaid, ‘than welcoming one of our lost brothers or sisters home?’

The journey from the feasting hall of the third deep to the first gate was one of half a dozen miles and several thousand steps. It was an unaccustomedly strenuous exertion that left Aegil panting and breathless on numerous occasions, leaning against the walls and wondering what had become of his strength. In spite of that, he was not the only duardin who had opted to leave behind the cold meats, tasteless ale and hollow toasts in favour of joining Soini on the journey. The entire hall had chosen to accompany him. A new arrival. It was so unexpected, so unprecedented in recent times, that there had been no one willing to remain behind, save the two befuddled-looking hammerers, oathsworn to safeguard the feasting hall on Kungstrollen.

The immensity of the corridor, the emptiness, swallowed them all.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

This eBook edition published in 2022 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Christian Byrne.

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