Red River Valley

"Mark Mark Mark"

Thorgrim Steinier watched the team throw several grenades through the opening before him. The detonations came after two long seconds and lit the opening with the harsh light of a flashbang and the passage of a pressure wave.

"gogogo"

Made a four man team vault into the next cave. To Thorgrim it was poetry in motion, all team members moved very very fast, all oriented themselves the way they had so that the rom beyond was covered in minimal time. The Cave Raider heard two short burst, then a small break and was about to relax the bit he was capable of when two more explosions lit the opening again. To his practiced ear their sound was off and it was immediately followed by the booms of high-calibre rifles. There was no real need for orders, and his "Team two, go." Went to the backs of the next team that went through the opening. Thorgim took the next team inside when the shooting did not stop and stepped into a clusterfuck. He immediately knew that things were bad when he spotted the hole with the blackened rim in the centre of the cavern which probably had been used as a grenade sump. The DawiZharr had probably kicked the grenades right in, absorbing the fragments and directing the blast to the ceiling.

Their ears would still bleed, they`d be dazed and they still had shot back. Grungi damn it, these guys had been to school and then some. The visor on his Mauser placed a red dot on the chest of one and the long boom of the rifle announced the three-round burst that placed all bullets within an inch. The chest of the Frundarr emptied in an ugly mess just to be replaced by another one who had his rifle on Thorgrim already. The shot went right into the Cave Raider`s chest and dropped him to the ground. More shots could be heard and his opponent made a half-turn before falling flat on his face.

Thorgim needed a minute to regain his breath, a minute spent laying low in the middle of a firefight, which was 60 seconds too long . The witness plate of his armour had caught the bullet that was to end his life and had distributed the energy around so it would not penetrate. Still this hurt like a bitch. When he was finally up again the enemy had retreated or would no longer move by his own accord. Unfortunately so would a couple of Cave Raiders, at least for a while. His soldiers carried the best non-powered armour of any combatant on this world as they did not have to lug lots of equipment over large distances and were terrifyingly fit. Yet whatever rifle was used by the Frundarr tested the armour to its limits and in some cases then some. Steinier had to watch a soldier being carried from the cave who had been hit in the arm. The bullet had not penetrated, but before the spidersilk had stopped its momentum had probably smashed the bone beneath.

The next cave showed that the enemy had grenades too and a the lesson from Skavenblight, that even the best armour is close to useless against concussion, was repeated again. The tunnel beyond that cave was only taken after Brugdir, a Dawi he had fought with since Middenheim had taken a shot though his faceplate and died right there. The same tunnel and the same cave held the bodies of nearly a dozen dead Frundarr, but that was little consolation. Thorgrim had taken his company of Cave Raiders against the Skaven time after time and had been pretty sure that he commanded the unit most suited to this kind of warfare. Yes, the equipment gave him and his soldiers a marked advantage but the enemy knew his terrain and displayed serious guts, not to speak of the best equipment he had ever faced. This would be a bitch and a half.

Bignose was still alive, something he had not expected. His newfound joy in life, watching the stumpies die, had been taken from him. After the customary beating he had been brought into a huge cave with many others. The march to the cave had been gruesome as there had been no reprieve. There had been close to enough food for everybody, yet the weakened Goblins had been pushed hard enough that two of Bignose`s chaingang members had died in some nameless tunnel when they dropped. Their guards had whipped them a couple of times and when that had not brought results they had simply killed them then and there. Those Greenskins who had made it had been chained down in endless rows. Bignose had spent the last two days here sitting in his and the others filth while every so often a group of Goblins had been herded out of that cavern to parts unknown. At other times other Goblins were brought into the room so it was still mostly full.

Nobody knew what happened to those taken outside, but the strange sounds that were transmitted through the rock were frightening. There were several kinds of evil hissing to be heard, clanging and something like a mechanical heart that had an unchanging beat. Bignose had nasty lacerations around his neck and legs which hard started to heat up and swell as they had chafed like mad through the march. He could just hope this was not the start of an infection, that would kill him painfully. He had seen that often enough but could not summon the energy to really care.

The guard next to him made a coughing noise and Bignose tried to spot him with his peripheral vison as looking directly at the stumpie would gain another beating at the very least. The Goblin could not find that guard.

Thorgim waited till the second team had started to fire and then sprinted forward to the next pillar. He waited for something to strike him but except for a bullet that "cracked" far too close to his head nothing happened. He dropped behind a pillar and pushed the small flexible stalk of his helmet camera around the pillar before him. The small picture superimposed in his visor gave the monochrome view of more pillars, of a dirt-strews floor and few else. There was no sign of where the bullet had come from till a small stalk moved behind the pillar after the next one. He pushed the stalk back, dropped to the ground and rolled to the other side of his cover. He tried to expose as little of himself as possible and pulled the second trigger on his rifle. The grenade dropped mostly where he wanted it, a bit to the right and rear of the pillar that held the Frundarr. The fragments that erupted from the grenade reached into the areas he could not shoot directly and a scream followed the explosion. A body dropped from there and he treated it to a burst from his rifle.

There were more shots exchanged, more cries from the wounded that would probably make it and the dreadful grunts of those who would probably not. In the end the Tunnel Raiders were successful, they simply had better firepower and armour, not to speak of things like wireless.

Lord Hrothgar crouched as low as his armour would allow him and looked through one of the few holes before him. Below him more and more humans entered the huge cave, looking for their wounded, securing his DawiZharr and covering the exits from the cave. The last 30 seconds new enemy had entered the cavern, so it was time.

"Persnid, give the signal"

Hrothgar deftly stepped back from the pile of rocks before him and watched as a series of small explosions dropped most of them into the chaos below. When he sprinted forward to find cover behind the remaining one he could not help himself but shout in triumph. Several tunnel openings into the cavern below spewed smoke and dust from them, signalling that the remotely controlled charges he had had placed there before the battle now sealed the exits. His warriors brought their weapons forward-the brass gleam of the machine guns, the darker barrel of the autocannon and their rifles.

He watched one squad step forward and raise rifles that currently ended with finned bombs.

"Down, down down."

Their shots were somehow mute but only half-seconds later bright magnesium fire bathed the cavern below in a hellish white light. His warriors donned the googles they had been given and started to slaughter the enemy.

Throgrim had been one of the lucky ones as he had his visor down. The German-made visor had immediately darkened itself and so he saw something else that glowing green globs. That did not improve the view as he could see several machine gun emplacements high up the walls of the caver which caught his men in a nasty crossfire, saw a cannon that lobbed explosive death into their midst and all too many still bodies. Furious at himself for leading his unit into such a trap he screamed for everybody to get into cover and use grenades while he reloaded his own launcher. Instead of firing from cover he went from cover into a kneeling stance and lobbed a grenade over the huge cavern, just to see it detonate against the barricade in front of the Frundarr. He took all eternity to push another fat projectile into the tube and took more time to aim for the small slot between ceiling and barrier. By that time shots went into the ground all around him and by the looks the autocannon was now aimed in his direction.

The grenade left the launcher and to his utter disappointment was deflected by the barrier into the ceiling from where it dropped out of sight. Half a second later an explosion behind the barrier was followed by several others. He had started to move back into cover when he felt a huge blow to his head and then nothingness.

Bignose found something to be exited about after all which was a bit surprising given that an hour ago he had mulled his death pretty apathetically. He got more involved emotionally when he found that he could not see the guard as he lay on the ground, bleeding. Two other guards resembled pincushions and then there was nobody to see the Goblins that came from a newly hewn opening. They walked about with strange-looking tools that cut through the pins that held Bignoses chain without further ado.

Then he had been given a dagger and like all the other slaves a general direction. No more was needed and if Bignose would not have been so consumed with his desire for revenge he might have found it interesting how quickly his exhaustion disappeared when he got a chance for payback. On the other hand, maybe not, Goblins are not given to introspection and so a green flood broke loose in the very hearts of the DawiZharr`s camp.

Bignose was pretty lucky when the ranks of former slaves before him withered under gunfire but managed to shield him and the others long enough to close with the enemy. The stumpies were no taller than them but much more massive and better armoured. It just meant they could take down a few more Goblins before going under. Bignose punched his dagger into the back of the stumpie even when he had stopped moving and when bits dropped off.

When he looked around he found no more guards to go around and wondered if he should go with the others who looked for more opportunities to exact their revenge which was surely a good thing. On the other hand all that had made him terribly hungry and from where he stood there was a lot of food about.

Lord Hrothgar was livid, this was taking far longer than it should have and had already cost far too much. He had these feral humans in a crossfire until that madman took out the second emplacement with a grenade. Ever since then the humans could hide behind the pillars and take potshots at him. They could not escape his wrath but this was hard going. The humans could not work on the sealed tunnels as long as he could fire upon them, but sending assault parties to the cavern had proven to be a disaster as his warriors had been slaughtered.

He had to think about something else and quickly, Lord Gholam wanted results and fast. He was thinking about more grenades when a huge bang at the entrance to his position took his attention. He barely had time to see many green bodies forcing themselves into the small alcove, attacking anything in range with spears and daggers. One Goblin aimed a staff into the room and let loose with something his brain identified as lightning before it shut down.

Thorgim Steinier was in a world of hurt when he came to. He had double vision, a legendary headache, a stomach that was not sure if he contained enough mass to throw up and what view he had did not cheer him up either.

"Hey humie, dontya think I make rescuing your kind a habit. This is going to cost ya..." Steinier`s vision was not good enough at present to identify the Goblin, but the huge Squig besides him marked him as Skarsnik easily enough. Presently he could barely groan.

Wuppertal

The file felt strange Jan-Peter Fahs` hands, like anything else he touched with them these days. Three months ago they had been soft, like the hands of nearly any other high schooler that Fahs knew. Then his application to study manufacturing systems engineering had been approved. And like any other such student he spend his first weeks doing hands-on training with a file. He had been given some instructions, several drawings and had to make metal parts with files only, to a tolerance below 0.1 mm. It had been a nasty time, getting blisters of legendary size and experiencing extreme frustration at least once when he had taken off 0.2 mm of steels too much and had to repeat the work of two days.
More than a few students had dropped from the course and Jan-Peter just kept on as he was unwilling to give up, especially in the face of the sniggering Dawi who were in the same workshop. That part of the course used to last for six weeks, now it had been shortened to four as another part of makework filled four weeks more. All of that had built up a lot of callus on his hands and so everything felt a bit strange these days.

This part was remarkably creative, he had been given drawings of several simple clockwork-driven machines and had been asked to make one of them, with modifications if he so choose. For some reason the drawing of a spring-driven dog had appealed to him and he had taken to the task with gusto. To his and his co-eds amazement he spent a lot of time making the small mechanism happen. It was nothing special, a wireframe with movable legs and a tail which should be able to move about five steps before the spring wound down. It would of course, move only in a straight line as lacked any sort of steering and the tail would wag at the same speed as the legs.
And for such a stupid project he even skipped the cantina which offered low-cost food and the faint possibility to meet girls, in fact the last two evenings he had barely made it home. He filed, riveted, soldered and bent metal with abandon and only in his mind did the mechanism in front of him follow the drawing closely. He had two burns on his hand, lacked about three kilograms of fat and his shirt positively reeked. He was so absorbed by his work that he never realized how closely the assistant professor and the Master Craftsman running the workshop were watching him by now.

And then came the moment that he had both anticipated and dreaded for the last days, the make-it or break-it moment. The moment were he put away the tools, when he lovingly applied a bit of oil, inserted the key and wound it up. When he released the key his heart seemed to skip a beat when nothing happened and resumed double time when the bleeding robo-dog started to move. Haltingly at first and then at greater speed it made for the edge of the workbench at a speed Jan-Peter had not foreseen. Jumping to prevent his efforts from smashing itself into pieces he nearly fell itself when the dog changed course, followed the edge of the bench and stopped right in front of him. His eyes blinked rapidly when the dogs head rose and the tail wagged by itself without any movement of them legs. This should really not be possible, he had not build any guidance into robo, the spring should have wound down already and the legs had to move with the tail as he had mechanically connected them, or had he?

"Looks like it is door number two for you my friend."
Jan-Peter managed to jump quite a bit as he had totally not seen the Master Craftsman supervising the workshop approaching.
"Err-what."
"Your little doggy just made a statement, he says you are a Technicus."
"You are joking right?"
"Technicii build things that should not work but do. Your dog should not work like this and it does, so you are a Technicus. For your kind there are very different courses, but I hear they are very interesting ones."
"So you test here if we are gifted? I did not know…."
"Would nix the results or so I am told. Congrats, you will build marvels the rest of us cannot make."

When Jan-Peter left the workshop in a daze it took him a while to realize that the dog still followed him.

Red River Valley

Skarsnik thought the humie had been an idiot. He had not haggled very hard and had settled for eight crates of ammunition. How could he be so daft? The rifles that Skarsnik had captured were a godsend to the Goblins. They allowed a scrawny Gobbo to kill even the biggest Ork with no more effort than to pull the trigger. Finally the stronger Orcs would no longer be able to bully the Goblins, these "rifles" would more than equalize the field. So that they needed a little skill to use? So one needed some smarts to acquire more ammo, pah. That would just prevent the big bullies to make use of them. And here he received eight crates of it to watch something he would have paid for himself? Maybe that stumpie they had captured might be one of the leaders, his hat had been fancy enough, but still that Ottokar Proktor was really stupid.

Well, maybe not in all ways as he had such an interesting way to get that stumpie to spill the beans. Currently the prisoner was strapped to some sort of bench and several tubes ran into his arms and one into his mouth. Something clear was running down the transparent tubes and what little face could be seen under the beard had relaxed markedly during the last hour. By now a humie with a pointy hat, long beard and armoured vest had stopped chanting and throwing glowing dust about and his eyes had turned up till only the white shone. Sedated or not, the arms and legs of the stumpie started to move as far as the bonds would let them.
Could it be that the humies had dropped the stumpie something that would confuse him, make him less able to fight back in his mind and then had a mage look through what was in the ugly head? Clever, he liked that. Maybe he could do something similar with Mad Cap fungi and a Weirdboy?
It was quite a while later that the humie Weirdboy started to speak again.

"Sir Proktor, this one calls himself "Lord Hrothgar"..

ZharrNaggrund

Jasla would tell everybody that the boy before her was fine, that all was as it should be, but she was more worried than all of them together. The boy before her was just five, yet the body before her was 17 or so and his mind was on a different plane already. A mind that she had shaped as precisely and as ruthlessly as any smith shapes a sword. The result was beautiful and deadly in equal measure and Mordred would be the weapon that would secure her place in the world and would make her great, wouldn`t he?
She had sung her nightly words of power already, had deepened her sons strictures and loyalties which could only be to her, were only hers. Anything else would be an utter disaster, even now she could sense how powerful Mordred would become in future. He was asleep now, relaxed and even so he seemed to smile, a smile that warmed her heart. She allowed herself a moment of that warmth before she retreated to her rooms.

She had decisions to make, important ones. The news of the current campaign were good, maybe too good to be true. She knew only what the DawiZharr told her and they would lie to her when it suited them. Much worse, they lied to themselves when they had the inkling that this might improve their chances at survival. The valleys the DawiZharr had targeted were said to be theirs by now and lots of slaves were shipped to ZharrNaggrund each day. Farming equipment was already being sent to the World`s Edge Mountains and might arrive in time to allow for a harvest still this year. The weapons her Germans had helped to forge were doing great, even the haughty DawiZharr were noting that. If she had any doubts about the veracity of these news the increased requests for cooperation by previously disdainful Warsmiths made that clear.
Her station had risen as a consequence and she could foresee a future she liked, were it not for a tiny titbit of information nearly lost in the soup of rumours and half-truths that she received. The rumours said that the DawiZharr had not only attacked Greenskins of some kind but humans, humans that possessed advanced weapons by their own, some of which had been captured.

If that were true it might mean the DawiZharr had attacked their Germans or their allies. That would be very bad indeed, Jasla had a good idea how powerful the Germans could be if they so choose. She had warned Lord Astragoth several times not to attack them but the Chaos Dwarf ruler had been increasingly cool to her advice in this matter.
One of her Germans had suggested a reason for this, he called it the "victory disease"
But what did that mean for her and the Germans that were her stock-in-trade? Did this mean they had to relocate again? On the one hand she really did not know where to turn, on the other hand things might get very dicey if the Germans decided that the DawiZharr annoyed them too much. She had acquired her respect for the Germans the hard way in Papenburg and after being properly beat up she had to learn that the Druchii had fought the City Soldiers. It had taken her trek from Neustadt to this place and her unquestioned command of her Germans that she learned how utterly devastating things could become should they become seriously annoyed. Words like "special weapons", "megatons" and "Fallout" could keep her awake at night. The very distance that made the Chaos Dwarfs believe that they were safe no matter what happened in the World`s Edge Mountains might very well mean that the Germans might use a very permanent solution to their problems. And in that case she was probably better of looking at Ind or some such place.
"NO"
The spike of combined pain and pleasure ripped her off her seat and to the ground. She knew far better than to argue with her patron deity. Some days it really did not pay to get up. But what the heck did Slaneshee want with her here? This was about the last place the Prince of Pleasure was appreciated.

30 Kilometres from Zharr-Naggrund

The air around Ernst Hermann was cold, tasted of chemicals he could not name but would probably shorten his life and he had to pee into a bag he would later bury. Life was tolerable for the KSK officer and by his metric the operations was running smoothly. He had a purely recognisance order and he fulfilled it in a manner he could not have imagined before the Weltensprung. Instead of long watches in damp foxholes he sat semi comfortably before several monitors and watched the work of many drones. Currently his biggest fear was not some idiotic goat herder who wanted to take a leak on the bush he was hiding in but a power loss to his drones or interrupted communications to a relay station.
Several things made that possible: The new batteries allowed the drones an autonomy unthinkable a few years ago. No enemy faction on the Warhammer World was sophisticated enough to pick up the many radio signals given off by their data streams and they simply did not look for them as they had few idea they existed at all. So currently his teams managed a veritable fleet of spider drones, quadcopters and more specialized stuff that gave a metric shitload of data.
Unfortunately he lacked context for what he was seeing and the staff back at Geltow had a hard time making sense of it all.
There were lots of fires for example and lots of them of the smelter type, yet as far as they knew a good third of them were for sacrificing, not the refining of metals. There were long columns of what seemed like statues until a drone had clearly shown eye movement in one of it.

"So Jan, how are things going?"
"I think we have the flow of materials down for this smelter. Look here is where they store the coal, this is the ore and this is the junk they mix in. The smelter looks very much like a Siemens-Martin to me, that is a bit too modern for this place. Anyway here is where they stack up the steel slabs and I do believe they are taken to a roller mill. Boss, this is pretty advanced for this place, best I could imagine them having is puddled steel. Actually I have found a place where they still make it that way."
"Well. Looks like our new orders from Geltow make more sense now. We are to look for Germans in this place."
"What the bleeding f…."

Windjammer Köln, Great Ocean, at night

"Köln" was running before a storm such as could only happen on a huge ocean that allowed the tempest enough space to build up to really titanic proportions without wasting energy on things like mountains or forests.
Each wave lifted the huge sail ship by many meters, the prow alternatively pointed at a dark sky full of racing clouds and rain or a deep sea full of death. Each time the bowsprit disappeared in the foamy waters and each time it reappeared from them. Added to the rise and fall was a nasty corkscrew motion that affected nearly everybody's inner ear in nauseous ways.

Currently the ship had simply no sails aloft, they would have been ripped apart by the gale anyway. In this kind of wind even the small area provided by yards and rigging was enough to give keep the ship oriented into the storm. The steering wheel needed to be manned by four seamen at all times as there was no hydraulic steering.
Master Evaldson, "Köln`s" captain, thanked the gods and Blohm&Voss for the steel keel and ribs, a wooden ship of this size would have been ripped apart by the storm long ago.
Inside the ship at least half the crew was busy puking their guts out, even the more experienced crew-members would react to the smell produced by those with more sensitive inner ears. Andrea Hermanns was one of the lucky ones and even able to forego the drugs which reduced the impact of motion sickness.

Such luck just meant that she had to look after the Germans which were not so healthy as her. She had made sure that everybody remained hydrated and got a little sugar in all of them, cleaned faces, helped to replace shirts and was generally there.
Currently she had a bucket full of things to get rid of and a great need to go outside, even when it was a stormy cold and wet outside. Donning her oilskin and vest she climbed the ladders to the deck before slipping into one of the safety rigs. She needed three attempts to open the door against tremendous wind pressure and when she was out fought to clip her carbine hook into a safety line. She did not walk to the leeward railing, she waddled as she had to compensate for the wind and the ship`s motion. She reached the rail, released the lid of the bucket and dispensed the contents into the ocean.

Putting one arm around the railing the steeled herself for the way back and used her time to look around. Visibility was bad, she could barely see 50 meters beyond the ship`s stern. She watched another figure stepping from the door she had used an make for her spot. His size made him a Norscan if the fact that he eschewed the safety line did not state as much already. One of the four manning the steering wheel raised an arm to waive and she did the same for a second, before he eyes widened in shock and her mouth opened for a useless warning.

The waves that raced past "Köln" were huge already and always seemed to reach above the Windjammer`s stern till they lifted the ship above them. The sheer wall of water that now approached the ship was in a different league entirely and seemed to reach the first yards in height. She barely managed to drop the bucket and grab for the railing when it broke over the ship and her world turned into a cold, dark, airless hell that pummelled her with a violence she had never experienced before. She was smashed against the railing and only her vest prevented fractures. She was still trying to comprehend what happened to her when something smashed into her. Barely softer that the wood below and behind her the something failed about and somehow grabbed her. Before she even realized that this must have been the sailor that had made his way across the deck she clamped her legs and one arm around the form and held on for sheer life.

When the waters finally receded she found herself face-to-face with Lars, the sailor that had disdained the safety lines at the worst of times and "Köln" in a world of hurt. While the coxswain and his assistants were still fixed to the wheel they seemed out of it or at least dazed and that had allowed the ship to turn before the storm. If that turn were to exceed a few points they would be unable to get "Köln" back into proper orientation the ship would be capsized shortly. At least one of the assistants tried his best to turn the wheel but he tried to do the job of four. For Andrea this was nearly the least of her worries as things above her started to tear, break and drop. She could just watch helplessly as a yard, fractured by the rogue weave ripped free from its rigging and dropped where she lay.

It was the most horrible moment of her life so far, just helplessly watching the mass of wood, sailcloth and steel dropping on her with no chance to get out of its way. What saved her for the moment was the wild swaying of the ship that dropped most of the yardarm outside of the ship which just left a couple of hundred kilogram of other stuff dropping around her and on Lars.

The iron grip the Norscan sailor had on her went slack in a second and his head dropped. She held on tighter than she would have believed possible just seconds before and then her world again was consumed by many tons of cold water that washed over her. While the water coming aboard was less than before it came from the sides and so she was tossed around like a rat in the mouth of a terrier and slammed against several surfaces repeatedly. When she was able to breathe again she found herself pulling Lar`s head back to free the airways and to open his mouth to release the salt water already there. Before she could do anything else the next wave smashed her around and the one after that. She was felt her mind slipping from the repeated abuse and the only thing she could concentrate on was holding tight to the unconscious man in her arms.
The next wave lacked the brutal energy of its predecessors but being unable to breathe for the duration was too much, Andrea Hermanns was out cold.
And that was how the two were found, battered, full of hematomas and with a fracture each but still breathing.

She needed nearly two weeks to get back into shape, her broken rib hurt miserably when the ship rolled and her berth with it. She had suffered hypothermia and both a fingernail and several square centimetres of skins were simply missing, removed by the same rope that had saved her life.
Andrea managed to make the mess under her own power but with a bit of wincing here and there and tried to hide her distress as best as she could. Weakness was barely tolerated by the Norscans even when she was a guest on board.
She had wolfed down her fish stew when she became aware that the usual conversations in the mess had died down and a small group that had Master Evaldson at its lead approached her. She managed to get up in time but was at a loss of what to say.
"Fru Hermannsdottir, you have saved one of my men from his own stupidity and drowning, which would have been a honourless death. You have held on when many would have released and you did what needed to be done until you were out of it. Well done lass, well done. The crew thought it fitting to give you a small gift."

The huge callused hands laid a bundle of cloth on the table and when Andrea unfolded it she realized what it was. A cloak spun from the beards of a species of ram that even the Norscans though a bit aggressive it was light, waterproof, insulated well and nearly unbreakable. It also represented the same value as the food needed to get a Norscan family through a couple of winters. She was about to give her thanks when the two other items dropped from the bundle.
The small working knife had a blade that had a very special dull sheen she had rarely seen before, mostly on the blades of Norscan swords. German scientists were still discussing how they were made, but this blade would cut through practically anything she presented to it. A priceless gift indeed, but in Andrea`s eyes it was of lesser importance than the Fibula that was besides it which was used meant to close the cloak. A golden fibula that displayed swirls and lines that would catch the eyes for hours if one would let them and a small line of runes she could read well enough these days.

Shield Maiden (Runes are not displayed on ff)