Thunder rolled as thick clouds churned overhead, and below, standing amid a stand of skeletal trees, a thick, powerfully muscled dwarf grimaced. He stood as though rooted to the earth, chewing idly on a stalk of long dead grass the color of straw plucked from the sparse fields surrounding the stand as he surveyed the skies.

This didn’t look good.

Blasted elves… he grumbled to himself, but didn’t bother uttering the words aloud. It would be pointless, as they were all thinking it anyway. The pointy eared little gits had boxed them in neat enough, and now they were doing something downright… unnatural… to the weather. Clouds didn’t just boil like that.

No, this really didn’t look good.

The dwarf harrumphed, then spat out the grass for good measure. There’d be time enough for grumbling later, he supposed. If he didn’t meet his end today, that was. His heart skipped a beat at the thought as he turned, the wind just starting to pick up and whipping at his flame coloured crest of hair, and stumped over to the others.

Willam Mountainstone was not in a good mood today. He, like his brethren, was a Slayer. He longed for his death, hoping that he would meet it at the hands of a foe worthy enough to take him down. His long handled axe, made of glittering, rune carved Gromril, was strapped tight across his back, and had been for three days now. Three bloody days!!! He glowered at the injustice of it. He and his brothers should be out there, forming up on the fields at the front of the army to meet the bastards that had chased them here head on! Instead, they were hiding in the only available cover on the whole blasted field, being held back in ‘reserve’. Unable to hold his anger in check, he punched the nearest tree, leaving a fist sized dent in the bark.

Bah! He’d give them ‘reserve’!

“Alright, Moustachio?” Bodan called over from the other side of the stand. Bodan Earthcarver was Willam’s second in command, and the closest thing he still had to a brother.

He sighed explosively, blowing out the ridiculously long whiskers which had given him his nickname in two long, thick billowing streams from his face. “Alright, Mud,” he called back, and he saw his friend nod knowingly.

We’re all getting antsy, that nod said, and Willam grunted, then turned and paced back towards the edge of the stand. He needed to see the results of the mess they’d gotten themselves into.

For three long years, since the Orc Warboss Gobuz Eye-Stompa had lead the assault on Karak Zhufril that had ended when the Rilbar was torn asunder in a freak explosion, the Dawi had been constantly on the move. Lord Thrak had been adamant that they continue harrying the blasted Greenskins, not letting the blighters get too comfortable in their ancestral halls, and making them pay in blood every hour of every damned day for having forced them out at all! It was a stinging admission, Willlam had to admit. Thrak had been driven nearly mad with the shame of it, and had done what most Dawi would never even consider as a result; he’d sworn to bear the shame of their defeat for them all, and had shaven his beard as a result. Thrak Shornbeard, they called him now. Lord of the Broken Hold.

Willam couldn’t fathom the burden the young Lord had shouldered after his father's death, and didn’t want to either. Some dawi were meant to lead, and young though he was, Thrak was one of them. Others, though…they followed a different path.

Like Willam. Or Moustachio, he supposed. It was what everyone called him, after all. He stroked his moustaches as he glowered. They were his pride and joy, the only thing that still meant anything to him, aside from his own death, of course.

They were the only thing that was left of the Dawi he’d once been. Before he’d gotten the news that Karak Zhufril had fallen.

And he hadn’t been there to defend it.

Willam had been away from the hold for many years, by that point. He’d been off travelling the world, performing as a circus strongman and daredevil throughout the length and breadth of the Empire, northern Tilea, and even as far away as the westernmost reaches of Bretonnia. The Great Moustachio, they’d called him! Or in the case of one unfortunate Bretonnian peasant, Wee Willy Whiskers. That one had directly resulted in the invention of a new bar game called Drunken Hick Chuckin’, which apparently had caught on after the circus had left town and was quite popular with the nobles nowadays.

His companions had been with him from the start, as well, setting out from the Hold in their youth to find their riches; Bodan, called Mud for the incredible amount which seemed to cake itself to his body wherever he went (which was a byproduct of his former profession as a Hog Wrestler, no doubt); Dunnar Irondigger, or Chops, as he liked to be called, which came from his favourite pastime of chopping whatever was at hand with the wickedly sharp axe he carried; Yegdrun Gemfist, usually simply called Fist, who had been the circus accountant, which was the only job anyone had been willing to trust him with since he was so clumsy he was as likely to drop the hammer on your head as to pound in the tent stake with it; Rakkel Foehammer, called Ham for his incredibly portly stature; and finally Ballak Dongarius Filigrid Thunderfoot the Third, who had been a stagehand and was usually called Dong simply because if one were to rap him on the head that was likely the only noise that would ever come out of it. Dong was not the brightest lamp in the mine, to put it bluntly.

They’d been inseparable, the six of them, off on an adventure, seeing the world and planning to come home with enough tales to talk the ears off of the eight or nine generations of grandchildren each one planned to outlive. And he’d been their leader. The Great Moustachio.

Willam continued to glower as he surveyed the scene spread out before him. From his vantage point atop the hillock upon which the stand stood, he could see the rest of the dawi forming ranks on the fields below to his right. To his left, where the fields gave way to dense trees, he thought he could see whispers of movement in the gloom under the dark boughs.

Elves, he thought, and spat in disgust.

After the fall of the hold, the dawi had been pushed out in all directions. Some had fled east, back to Karak Hirn and their ancestral roots there, while others melted into the surrounding forests and valleys and swiftly banded together, using the outer fortifications of the hold as bases of operations. Thrak had begun a guerrilla war against the blasted greenskins, which vastly outnumbered the remaining dawi, and he’d sent out runners to the four winds asking for aid in retaking the hold.

When word had reached him, he’d been drunk off his arse on some swill the Umgi had concocted in a dive in the city of Remas. The circus had swung south out of Bretonnia through Miragliano and back into Tilea again, and after four weeks of solid sold out performances he’d taken his crew out for a hard night’s drinking. One of Thrak’s runners was in the bar when he recognized the small group of six, and upon delivering the news Willam had sworn the Slayer’s Oath on the spot. His brothers, equally ashamed and outraged as he was, had all done the same. Had they been sober, they’d probably still have done it, too. Too late to second guess that now, though, he thought. An oath was an oath, and the shame he felt at not having been there to defend his home, of having been out gallivanting around the world like some bloody human while the hordes were tearing at the gates, was real enough, and got worse with every day that passed!

That was more than enough reason to seek his doom. He’d make the green bastards pay for what they’d done, or he’d die trying! They all would.

So they’d come home, back to the Black Mountains, and had searched for weeks, months even, trying to find their brothers. They’d finally stumbled across them after tracking a roving band of greenskins that had been tearing up the valleys north of the hold, and had ambushed the blighters from one side just as their kin hit them from the other. It was a bittersweet reunion, for the dawi left were in a sorry state.

Located roughly equidistant from Karak Hirn, Karak Norn and Karak Izor, Karak Zhufril was seated in a densely forested river valley high up in the mountains. The Gold River, from which the hold took its name, had its headwater directly under the foundations of the fortress itself, and from there it flowed directly north then west, running down until it emptied into the larger rivers the flowed into Athel Loren. The dawi had always had a rocky relationship with the elgi who dwelt there, and as the dawi’s numbers dwindled they were steadily being pushed further and further down out of the mountain fortifications they’d struggled vainly to hold on to. And as they were forced lower and lower, down into the foothills and close to their realm, the pointy ears seemed to take exception to their presence.

Three weeks later, and after almost a dozen hit and run strikes that had left the dawi bloodied and screaming for vengeance, Thrak had brought them right up under the boughs of the forest itself. Caught between the mountains to the south and east, and the forest to the north, Willam didn’t see how the young Lord planned to get them out of this one alive.

Which, after all, was exactly what he was hoping for.

Pointy eared gits on one side, stinkin’ bloody greenskins on the other. A Slayers dream! The thought actually brought a small smirk to his mouth. Either way, he’d repay a hundred grudges against his kin before the day was through.

Suddenly, a mournful horn split the air, and wave after wave of tall, slim figures emerged from under the boughs of the forest. Dressed in greens and reds and golds and oranges, all the colors of a forest in the midst of autumn’s slow death, the elgi seemed to shimmer in and out of view as their garb blended almost seamlessly with their surroundings.

Enough to make you go cross-eyed… Willam cursed, rubbing at his eyes. To his right, a signal flag went up from the middle of Thrak’s block, the heavy two-handed hammers which his bodyguard wielded forming a veritable forest of shining Gromril around the lord and almost obscuring him from view. The flag was red.

Willam smiled.

Turning, he rushed back towards the clearing in the middle of the stand even as in the distance he could just barely start to make out the beat of Orcish wardrums. “Alright, you barmy gits, mount up! We’re on notice!” He could hardly keep the glee from his voice as he ripped aside a pile of leaves and branches which stood in the middle of the clearing, revealing their most prized possessions.

Two wheels, shining steel, and enough steam power to launch a dawi clear across the horizon. A gift from Thrak’s thoroughly bonkers Engineer, a barking lunatic by the name of Duerval Stormwhistler. Willam couldn’t help but grin like an idiot himself as he ran his hands over the beautiful, mad contraption he’d be riding into battle.

Swinging his legs over top so that he straddled the device directly behind the steam tank, he started flipping switches and twisting knobs like he’d been shown and was rewarded by the steady hiss of building steam pressure. The gage on top of the tank slowly but steadily started to rise, fuelled by the specially crafted Runes which powered the thing, and around him he saw the others doing the same. Willam’s blood was pounding in his ears, his hands were sweaty, and it was all he could do to keep himself from twisting the hand crank and funnelling the building steam power directly from the engine to the wheels.

The anticipation was almost enough to kill him.

“Oi, what did Duerval call these things again, anyway?” Dong asked as another horn sounded, this one the clear, clarion call of skilfully crafted brass, and Moustachio laughed as he pulled his axe free from the straps on his back.

“He called ‘em Steam Bikes!” he yelled back as he twisted the throttle, and the bike surged forward, roaring up on its rear wheel as a gout of flame burst from the exhaust. With a wild whoop, the others quickly followed suit and roared out of the stand after him, down the hill towards the exposed flank of the elgi charge.

A cry, wild and fierce and full of manic joy, burst from the pit of Moustachio’s stomach as his axe sang through the air towards its first victim of the day, even as bolts of lightning split the air and stabbed down towards the assembled ranks of the dawi. They’d make their enemies pay, all of them, elgi and grobi and urk alike!

Now, if he could only figure out how to steer this bloody thing…