by Warhammer
As well he might, thought Felix. Not many dwarfs could claim to have survived an encounter with a daemon of Chaos.
Just behind them stood Hargrim, the son of Thangrim Firebeard, his beard dyed as black as his clothing as he mourned his father. Now his father was gone, he was the leader of the folk of Karag Dum. His face was as grim as death. His eyes were sad as only those of a dwarf who had lost father and home at the same time could be.
He noticed the look Borek gave him. It was not really a look suited to an ancient whose white beard dragged along the floor. It held an element of reverence that made Felix uncomfortable. Since his return from Karag Dum most of the dwarfs on the airship had been giving him that look. He had lifted Firebeard’s hammer and invoked its power in the battle with the great daemon. Apparently he was the first and only human in history since the time of the man-god Sigmar to have performed such a feat, and they now regarded him as blessed by their gods. Felix did not feel particularly blessed. Just invoking the hammer’s power had almost killed him. And fighting the daemon was a feat he hoped never to have to repeat in his life.
‘Look down there!’ said Felix to distract them. His keen eyes had caught sight of movement in the Wastes from the edge of the vast dust cloud. By all the gods, it was huge. If it were being made by a force of men, Felix would have suspected the presence of an army. Here in the Chaos Wastes, who knew what it signified?
As they closed with it, he could see a group of figures, made tiny by the airship’s altitude, riding across the land, a massive cloud of polychromatic dust rising in their wake.
Borek peered down through his pince-nez glasses. ‘What is it? Tell me! My eyes are not so good.’
‘It’s a trail of dust,’ Gotrek said. ‘There are riders down there. A lot of them.’
‘I would say several hundred. Black-armoured Chaos knights. Heading south, the same direction we are.’
‘Your eyes are better than mine, manling. I’ll take your word for it.’
‘That’s the tenth party we have seen since we left Karag Dum. All heading in the same direction.’ Slowly something became evident to Felix. He felt his heartbeat start to pound, and his mouth go dry. They were passing over the heart of the dust cloud now, and he could see many more figures. Thousands of them, perhaps tens of thousands. He thought he could make out the misshapen figures of beastmen, and other more disturbing things. It was apparent that the Chaos worshippers they had seen earlier were either stragglers from, or the rearguard of, a much mightier force. One that was heading directly into the lands of men.
‘By Grungni, it’s an army on the march,’ he heard Varek say. The young dwarf had a spyglass pressed to his face and was looking through it intently. ‘This is larger than the force that besieged Karag Dum. What is going on?’
‘I fear the Powers of Chaos are planning a new incursion into the lands of men,’ Hargrim said. ‘No place will be safe for my people.’
Felix felt a thrill of fear. The last thing anybody in the human lands wanted was a full-scale invasion by the followers of the Ruinous Powers. They were numberless and powerful, and Felix suspected, after what he had seen in these Wastes, that only their constant internecine fighting kept them from sweeping away human civilisation.
‘Good. I could use a decent fight,’ Gotrek said.
‘I would have thought you’d had enough of that recently,’ Felix said sourly.
‘There’s never enough fighting for a Slayer, Felix Jaeger,’ said Borek. ‘You should know that by now.’
‘Unfortunately I do.’ A new worry entered Felix’s mind, one he knew he had been trying to keep out all day. ‘If they invade, the Chaos hordes will come through the Axebite Pass.’
‘What of it, manling?’
‘Ivan Straghov’s mansion is right in their path.’
‘Then we had best hurry on and warn them, hadn’t we?’
Excitement and tension filled Felix’s mind. They were through the pass. The land of Kislev lay before them. In hours he would see Ulrika again. He felt more nervous than he cared to admit. As nervous as he had ever been before a battle, perhaps more so. He wondered if she would be as pleased to see him as he was going to be to see her. He wondered what she would say, what he would say, what she would be wearing. He shook his head. He knew he was behaving like a schoolboy with a crush, yet he could not help himself. It had been a long time since he had felt this way about anyone. Not since the death of Kirsten at Fort von Diehl, which seemed like years ago. It was a pity that he had to be bringing such bad tidings.
He placed the spyglass to his eye and scanned the horizon, hoping for a first glimpse of the mansion, and was rewarded with a view of what he thought was the mooring tower. Soon, he thought, soon.
‘Looking forward to being back?’ said a voice from beside him. Felix looked down at Varek. The young dwarf was looking at him with something uncomfortably like hero worship. Felix had no idea why. Varek had shared in all the perils of the descent into Karag Dum Felix had faced and had done his part to bring their quest to a successful conclusion. There was no reason for him to idolise Felix but it was apparent that he did. Varek wore a leather helmet and flying goggles. Makaisson had been teaching him how to fly a gyrocopter on the return trip. He had just come back from a flight, Felix realised.
‘Course young Felix is,’ said Snorri Nosebiter. ‘Even Snorri can see that. He’s going to see his lady friend.’
Snorri winked across at Felix knowingly. It was not a reassuring sight. Even bandaged as he was, Snorri Nosebiter was the only dwarf Felix had ever met who was more terrifying than Gotrek in appearance, and the wounds he had taken at Karag Dum had not improved his looks.
Like Gotrek, Snorri was a member of the Slayer cult, sworn to seek heroic death in battle. Like Gotrek his squat ape-like body was covered in tattoos. Unlike Gotrek, however, he had three nails driven directly into his shaven head. This was in place of the crest of hair that most Slayers had. Snorri was not the brightest of dwarfs but, for a Slayer, he was friendly.
Felix focussed the spyglass on the approaching manor house. There was something odd about it. At first he could not work out what, but slowly he started to put his finger on it. There were not enough people in the fields around it. In fact there was no one. There should have been serfs, carts, workhorses, soldiers, sentries, riders coming and going with messages. He ran his gaze across the horizon to make sure he was right. His heart was beating faster. His palms felt suddenly sweaty. There was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. This was wrong. Had the forces of Chaos already been here?
He breathed a prayer to Sigmar that nothing had happened to Ulrika, and then added one for her father and the rest of the people on the estate, but he was not sure his prayer was going to be answered. Looking closely at the mansion he could see signs of a disaster.
It looked as if the gate had been forced with a battering ram. There were signs of burning on the stone walls. Whole sections of the palisade had collapsed. It all reminded him sickeningly of the aftermath of the massacre at Fort von Diehl.
‘No, not again,’ he muttered.
‘What is it, manling? What do you see?’ Gotrek asked.
Felix did not answer. The only thing that gave him hope was the fact that he could not see any bodies. And he was not at all sure that it was a hopeful sign. There were no signs of life at all. No signs of a battle except the damage to the buildings and fortifications. Surely, he thought, there would be corpses, or at least signs of burial. Frantically he scanned the area for a funeral pyre or a mass grave. Perhaps that mound over there was new.
‘What do you see, manling?’ Gotrek asked again. There was a note of menace in his voice now.
‘The mansion has been attacked,’ he said. He was not sure how he managed to keep his voice steady but he did. ‘And it looks like everyone has simply vanished.’
‘Into thin air?’
‘It looks like it.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Gotrek said. ‘It smells of a trap
.’
Felix was forced to agree with the Slayer’s assessment. There was a wrongness about the situation down there that he did not like in the least. On the other hand, he desperately needed to find out what had happened to Ulrika. Let her be alive, he prayed.
The airship moved ever closer to the deserted-looking mansion.
Grey Seer Thanquol gazed at the approaching airship through the eyepiece of his periscope. As always, he was more impressed than he cared to admit by the dwarfs’ creation. That such a massive vessel could fly hinted at a magic greater than his own. Yet he knew it was not magic that kept the huge vessel aloft, but the dwarfs’ arcane technology.
He began to chew on some carefully hoarded pieces of powdered warpstone, knowing soon he would need all the sorcerous strength it could grant him. He felt a little weak. Last night his magical duel with the human wizard had taken nearly all his strength. It had almost upset all of his carefully laid plans. Who would have expected the humans to have such a strong mage in their midst? Still, in the end, Thanquol had triumphed, as was only inevitable. The power of a true servant of the Horned Rat would always overcome the feeble magic of mankind, just as the righteous skaven warriors had finally succeeded in taking the human keep. It filled Thanquol’s heart with pride to think they had managed it even though they had only outnumbered the humans ten to one. It was a fitting tribute to the genius of his leadership that victory was his in the teeth of such odds.
They had even taken some prisoners, who would doubtless serve as suitable subjects for Clan Moulder’s experiments once this expedition was over. It pained Thanquol to think that they had not had enough time yet to really interrogate their captives. There was nothing he found more relaxing than breaking a few terrified humans to his will. In particular he was pleased to have the human wizard in his clutches. The man had been knocked unconscious by magical backlash when attempting to dispel Thanquol’s last spell. Once he was conscious and Thanquol had the time, he would torture the man for the secret of his spells.
They had even managed to capture a few breeders, which was an unexpected bonus. The survivors were imprisoned in the cellars except for the youngest and, Thanquol guessed, the most attractive of the breeders whom he thought he might be able to use to lure Felix Jaeger and Gotrek Gurnisson into a trap.
Even the timing of the airship’s arrival seemed to favour him. It was getting dark and that would help cover the ambushing troops waiting in the building and the cellars to erupt on the dwarfs. It occurred to Thanquol as he viewed the oncoming airship that Lurk could still be alive, and perhaps he might be able to contact him. That being the case, Thanquol thought, it was worth the attempt. It might prove very useful to have an agent alive and about Thanquol’s business up there.
He decided he’d better make the attempt.
Lurk’s head was splitting. It was not unusual these days. In the recent past he had endured more suffering than any skaven in the history of the world. It was so unfair. He had not asked to stow away on this accursed airship. He had not asked for these changes to come over his body. Doubtless it was the warpstone, he thought, and those lightning bolts that had hit the airship what seemed like an age ago. They had caused the changes. He had heard of similar changes coming over grey seers after prolonged consumption of the stuff, and the Horned Rat alone knew how much warpstone dust he had breathed in since the foolish dwarfs had taken their stupid airship out over the Wastes.
If only he had stayed below in the cupola, where it was safe. Where the air was filtered by screens, there was plenty of food and human and dwarf magic protected you from the effects of Chaos. Alas that had not proved possible. His thirteen-times-be-damned master, Grey Seer Thanquol, had insisted on regular reports and it was impossible for his sorcery to touch his lackey while he was within the protected area. So Lurk had to leave the protection of the gondola to please his accursed master. Thus had Lurk come to be exposed to the mutating dust in the first place. And now, with the cupola full to bursting with stunties, it was all but impossible for Lurk to hide down there. It would only have been a matter of time before he was detected, and he doubted that even a skaven of his prodigious potency could overcome so many dwarf warriors.
He did not know what was worse – the pain in his head or the hunger that burned in his belly. He could not remember ever being so ravenous, not even after battle, when every skaven was most in need of sustenance. The hunger had come on him with the changes in his body. He was huge now, and muscular, in a way he had never been before. He had muscles like a rat-ogre and his tail was like a length of steel cable. His body was probably twice its previous size and his talons were like daggers. Knobs of horn, similar to the ones on Grey Seer Thanquol’s cranium, had started to protrude from his skull. Was he becoming a grey seer, Lurk wondered? Or was this a sign of some other blessing from the Horned Rat? Right at this moment, Lurk did not feel particularly blessed. Right now he was feeling tired and hungry and sorry for himself. He was filled with the justifiable caution in the face of his enemies that some mistakenly called fear. And there was this strange buzzing in his head. A buzzing that seemed to take the form of words.
Lurk! You dolt! Is that you?
Lurk wondered whether this was a hallucination brought on by starvation, or whether the horrors he had endured had finally driven him mad. Still, there was something strangely familiar about the voice, an annoying arrogance and a contempt for everyone but its owner.
Lurk! Answer me! I know you are there! I can sense you!
Lurk’s paws strayed to the amulet Grey Seer Thanquol had given him. Was it possible, he asked? After all these long days, that Thanquol had managed to re-establish contact?
I can see the airship, you oaf! And I can feel your feeble mind. If you do not answer me, I shall consume your pathetic soul, and feed your festering carcass to Boneripper.
The first faint flicker of rebellion flared in Lurk’s brain. Who was Grey Seer Thanquol to speak to him in such a manner after all he had endured? Had Thanquol ever ventured into the Chaos Wastes? Had Thanquol ever travelled so far in such a dangerous and experimental vehicle? Had Thanquol ever been exposed to warpstone dust and mutated in such an uncontrollable fashion? Just let him try and feed me to Boneripper, Lurk thought, as the rage built up in his mind. I will tear the creature limb from limb, consume its flesh, crack its bones for marrow and spit the gristle at you, mighty Grey Seer Thanquol. You see if I don’t.
But what he did was reach out and touch the crystal. ‘Mightiest of masters,’ he chittered. ‘Can it really be you? Has your omnipotent sorcery finally succeeded in overcoming the dire obstacles placed in its way by those wicked dwarfs and re-established contact with your faithful Lurk?’
Yes, idiot, it has!
The baleful thought blasted through the ether and lodged itself in Lurk’s brain. Lurk was amazed that his mouth and forebrain could mouth such gross and insincere flattery while his hindbrain and entire spirit festered with rebellion. He knew that given a chance he would kill Thanquol, and the world would be none the worse for it. The grey seer was mad and incompetent. He deserved to die and be replaced by someone better. Someone not unlike Lurk, in fact. He knew now that it was not only his body that the warpstone had altered but his mind and spirit. He had become smarter and his eyes had been opened to many things. He knew now he was cleverer than Thanquol, and could lead far better, if given a chance. For the moment though, he decided that prudent skaven caution was the best course.
‘Where are you, mightiest of masters?’
I am below you in the human fortress, waiting to spring a trap on those stunted fools. Now report to me! Where have you been? Why have you not responded to my potent spells of communication?
Because they never reached me, you overbearing clod, thought Lurk. ‘Perhaps my feeble brain was incapable of encompassing such potent sorceries, most masterful of mages,’ he replied.
Report! Are there many dwarfs on the airship? Is it damaged? Where have you been? Do you have man
y treasures on board?
What is this mad skaven on about? Treasures? What treasures could there possibly be? Grey Seer Thanquol had no idea what had been going on up here, that much was obvious. Did he think that Lurk had the run of the airship? That the dwarfs gave him a cheery greeting and an answer to all his questions? His disrespect for Thanquol increased with every passing moment. His mouth said: ‘Which question should I answer first, wisest of leaders?’
Answer as you will but answer quick-quick! We may not have much time before...
‘Before what, most perspicacious of potentates?’
Never mind. Just be ready to act when I give the order.
‘As always, most commanding of commanders.’
If he closed his eyes, Lurk could visualise Grey Seer Thanquol standing before him, red orbs gleaming with mad knowledge, the froth of the warpstone snuff to which he was addicted clinging to his lips. Lurk wished the grey seer was here right now so that he could reach out and wring his scrawny neck. He flexed his talons in anticipation.
Soon the airship will dock and our trap will be sprung! Prepare to spread as much chaos and confusion among the stunties as you can, but be careful not to damage the airship!
Prepare to get myself killed furthering your crazed schemes, you mean. Lurk had no intention of endangering his life for the greater glory of Grey Seer Thanquol. It occurred to him that he had done this quite often enough already without adding to the tally of misdeeds that Thanquol owed him for. ‘Of course, master. I live to obey,’ he said.