All hell has broken loose in the Forest of Tar.
Thousands of demonic Feeders consume everything in their path, but top of the menu is dwarf flesh.
Nils has been captured by the Liche Lord Otto Blightey but would sooner be dead, and Nameless is on the run, carrying a warning of doom to the last of his people.
As the Liche Lord and his horde of Feeders relentlessly pursue him, there is little time for Nameless to settle old scores, mend bridges, and pray that the survivors of his butchery at Arx Gravis can forgive him just enough for him to save them.
Only problem is, he's not sure he has the strength or the courage for the task.
With the sentient Axe of the Dwarf Lords as petrified as everyone else, the last hope of the dwarves lies in the hands of a shapeshifting assassin with a reputation for self-preservation at all costs.
Cursed by a demonic axe and fueled with an unquenchable bloodlust, the Nameless Dwarf slaughters his own people in their thousands. The survivors flee to the nightmare realms beyond the mountains, where no one has ever set foot and lived to tell the tale.
Freed from the axe, and horrified by what he has done, the Nameless Dwarf pursues them across the known world. Convinced there can be no atonement, he is prepared to sacrifice everything to save the last of his race from extinction.
The trail leads to the brigand town of Malfen, on the fringes of civilization. But no one passes though without paying a toll to an underground boss known as the Ant-Man.
It is a toll that has already cost many their lives.
Publisher's Note: A Dwarf With No Name was previously published as The Ant-Man of Malfen. The most recent edition of the story is included in Annals of the Nameless Dwarf Book 4: Skull of the Lich Lord.
A name destined to be forgotten. A cursed axe. An atrocity too great to be forgiven.
'Gritty, tense, and brutally tragic. High quality storytelling with great characters and a relentless plot.' -- Mitchell Hogan, author of A Crucible of Souls and Aurealis Award winner.
The legend begins...
For more than a thousand years, the dwarves have hidden away from the world in their ravine city of Arx Gravis.
Governed by an inflexible council whose sole aim is to avoid the errors of the past, the defining virtue of their society is that nothing should ever change.
But when the Scriptorium is broken into, and Ravine Guard Carnifex Thane sees a homunculus fleeing the scene of the crime, events are set in motion that will ensure nothing will ever be the same again.
Deception and death are coming to Arx Gravis.
The riddles that preceded Carnifex's birth crystalize into a horrifying fate that inexorably closes in.
But it is in blood that legends are born, and redemption is seeded in the gravest of sins.
For Carnifex is destined to become the Ravine Butcher, before even that grim appellation is forever lost, along with everything that once defined him.
The dwarves have captured Nameless and left the Axe of the Dwarf Lords abandoned on the shore of the serpent’s lake.
With Ilesa gone, it’s down to Nils and Silas to stage a rescue, but first they’ll have to stop squabbling and find something they can agree on.
Meanwhile, the legendary prevarication of the dwarven Council of Twelve is under threat from a people grown tired of indecision.
The survivors of the Ravine Butcher’s massacre want their pound of flesh. Blightey’s grimoire makes more and more demands, and Silas suspects he no longer has any say in where it is leading him.
As his body ails and he grows nostalgic for all he’s left behind, his mind is usurped by visions of a forest of tar, and at its center, wreathed in briars, a staff of deepest ebony.
Nils Fargin wishes he’d never taken the job to escort a dwarf with no name on a madcap quest for redemption.
Ilesa reckons she should have asked for a bigger bounty, and Silas is beginning to think the grimoire he stole from the Academy has a sinister will of its own.
Nameless, on the other hand, is having the time of his life. After all, what more could a dwarf want than a horde of undead to splatter with his axe, a shape-shifting woman who does dwarf especially well, and a wizard who can produce ale out of thin air?
But his ever fragile mood takes a turn for the worse when he discovers a terrible secret at the bottom of the sea—an unstoppable horror that destroyed an entire race, and a mythical axe that brings back the darkest of memories from his recent past.
