Hargrim did so.

With the speed the provisions disappeared Felix was glad that Hargrim was the only one of the local dwarfs who had joined them at their table.

Felix looked around the room. It was richly furnished with thick but worn carpets and drapes, fine dwarfish statuary and a merchant's ransom in silver and gold. It was one of the royal apartments. Each of the comrades had been given a similar one. Felix supposed that was one good thing about the casualties the dwarfs had suffered: there was plenty of room. He pushed the thought aside as unworthy and realised that he was getting drunk.

"I still cannot believe that we have strangers here," Hargrim said. From the flush on his face, Felix could tell that the captain was inebriated as well. "It astonishes me. For so long we thought we were the last dwarfs in the world. We thought Chaos had overrun everywhere else. We sent out messengers and scouts into the wilderness but they never returned. It all seemed so hopeless and now you arrive and tell us that there is a whole world beyond the Wastes, that Chaos was thrown back, that the Empire and Bretonnia and all those other places of legend still exist. It hardly seems possible that others have survived these past twenty years without us knowing it!"

"Twenty years?" spluttered Felix and Varek almost simultaneously.

"Aye! Why do you look at me that way?"

"It has been two hundred years since the last incursion of Chaos!" Felix said.

Hargrim looked at him in astonishment. "That cannot be!"

"Time flows strangely in the Chaos Wastes," Varek reminded them.

"Strangely indeed," said Felix, remembering what Borek had told him of the odd powers of the place. Could the Dark Powers warp even the flow of time, he wondered, or was this some strange property that the Wastes themselves possessed?

"Believe me," Varek said to Hargrim, "Here in Karag Dum only twenty years may have passed but beyond the Wastes it has been centuries, and there Chaos was thrown back."

"How did it happen?"

"Magnus the Pious rallied men and dwarfs to his cause, and broke the hordes of Chaos at the Siege of Praag, in Kislev. Eventually the followers of the Dark Ones were driven back to beyond Blackblood Pass."

"And yet no one ever came to relieve us," said Hargrim, and he sounded almost bitter.

Felix did not know what to say. "Everyone thought Karag Dum had fallen. The last reports were of the city being overrun by the hordes of Chaos."

Gotrek surprised him by speaking. "No one knew what had happened. The Chaos Wastes had retreated but they had still advanced beyond where they once had been. They always do. Karag Dum was cut off. No one could find a way through. It was tried, believe me. Borek sought long and hard for a way to return."

"I do believe you, Gotrek, son of Gurni, for I have seen the Wastes, looked out from our highest towers, and I know they stretch as far as- the eye can see. I have fought the warriors of Chaos and know they are as uncountable as flakes of snow in a blizzard. We have so few warriors that we soon stopped trying to get messengers out. Many were captured and hideously tortured."

"How have you survived?" Varek asked—somewhat tactlessly, Felix thought. Still he was glad the young dwarf had asked the question. He wanted to know the answer himself. Hargrim shook his head.

"With great difficulty," he said at last and smiled wearily, "But that is not a fair answer my friends. The answer is that our foes are divided and we hide and fight them as we may."

"What do you mean?" Gotrek asked.

"Tell Snorri about the fighting," said Snorri.

"After the last great siege, when the forces of the Enemy used terrible sorcery to break our walls, we retreated deeper and deeper into the mines, determined to sell our lives dearly and make them pay for every inch of dwarfish territory with blood. Our people divided up into their clans and hosts and made their way to the secret fastnesses we had prepared against such a day."

"Like this one," Felix said.

"Precisely. We retreated under the earth, to places shielded by runes of power, and we emerged into the debated halls to raid and fight and we discovered a strange thing…"

"What was that?" Gotrek asked.

"We found that the forces of Chaos had fallen out with each other. We did not know then but we found out from captured prisoners that their supreme leader, Skathlok Ironclaw, had been drawn away to a battle in the south, and that his lieutenants, each of whom followed a different power, had fallen into dispute over the spoils."

"When was this?" asked Varek.

Hargrim gave a date in dwarfish which meant nothing to Felix.

"It was the Imperial Year 2302," Varek translated. "At about the time of the Siege of Praag,"

"If this was the case, why did you not drive them from the city?" asked Gotrek. Hargrim laughed and there was no mirth to his laughter.

"Because there were still so few of us left, son of Gurni. After the Great Siege we numbered less than five thousand warriors, and those were split between five hidden citadels. Even with the majority of their warriors gone, our foes numbered ten times that and divided though they were, we knew they would unite to fight against us if we emerged in strength. So, over the years, we learned to sally forth in small groups and pick away at our enemies. It was not a good strategy, as we later learned."

"Why?" asked Felix.

"Because for every one of their warriors who fell, another one would appear. For every war-band we destroyed, two more would come in from the Wastes. But when we lost a warrior we could never replace him. We may have killed twenty for every stout-hearted dwarf we lost, but in the end we had no way of replacing our losses, and they did."

"I can understand this," said Felix. There are many warriors out in the Wastes, and this is a worthy citadel and would provide them with shelter."

Hargrim shook his head sadly. "You do not understand the followers of Chaos at all well, if that is what you think, Felix Jaeger. They came here because there was treasure here—gold and dwarf-made weapons, and most of all the black steel they covet for the making of their armour and the forging of their foul weapons. They came here because they knew they would find others to fight of their own kind, and thus win glory in the eyes of their insane gods. This place has become a kind of testing ground for the warriors of Chaos, where they can find others to slaughter in order to advance themselves."

Hargrim's words made sense to Felix. He had occasionally wondered where the Chaos warriors got their weapons. He had seen no sign of foundries or factories or any kind of manufacturing since they entered the Wastes, yet the followers of the Dark Powers must get their gear from somewhere. He had simply assumed that it was the product of sorcery or bartered from renegade human smiths but now he saw another answer. Here at Karag Dum was ore and all the equipment produced by dwarfish industry. If some of the things he had heard were true, this one hold could produce more steel than the whole Empire. He voiced his suspicions at once.

"You are correct, Felix Jaeger. We tried to destroy all the forges and furnaces and anvils we could not dismantle and carry into the hidden places, but we did not have enough time to get rid of them all. Some were seized by the followers of the Ruinous Powers. Some were repaired using black and incomprehensible magics. Now the mines are worked by hordes of beastmen and mutant slaves, and mage-priests oversee the manufacture of weapons and armour."

"If this place could be retaken, it would be a terrible blow to the powers of Chaos. For where else would they get their weapons?" Felix said in drunken excitement.

"Perhaps. Perhaps not," Hargrim said. The Chaos worshippers must have other mines and other foundries now and empty as Karag Dum now seems it is still well held."