Gotrek & Felix- the Second Omnibus - William King

by Warhammer

  This must be the airship the Slayers had told him about, Johan realised. It was certainly impressive. Even as he watched, spluttering black bombs began to fall into the middle of the battle. The explosions tore through greenskin and human ranks indiscriminately. Judging from the way they fell, the dwarfs were trying to aim for the orcs and goblins, but not very hard. It was an impossible task anyway. The two sides were too intermingled for any sort of precision shooting.

  A roaring noise announced the entry of another dwarf weapon into the battle. From turrets on the underside of the cupola, gatling cannons roared to life. Shells ripped man and goblin apart with ease. Johan had seen enough. It was time to be going. Maybe he could grab a horse.

  The sound of explosions and the roar of gatling cannons told Felix that the Spirit of Grungni was doing its bloody work. His prayer had been answered, it seemed. The dwarfs must have finished repairing the airship and come looking for them. Judging by the new weapons bristling on its sides, they had come prepared to fight the dragon too. Felix knew that even if he died here, he would be avenged.

  Screams from nearby drew his attention back to the melee. He watched as Gotrek tore through Ugrek Manflayer’s bodyguard. The dwarf killed a foe with every stroke. Snorri was right beside him. True to his word he was aiming for the spider and its rider. Felix wanted to rush down into the melee and aid them, but he was tired and the pain of his wound would make it impossible to fight. No, he would stay here and record Gotrek’s doom if it came to him, and hope that the airship arrived in time.

  Snorri had reached the spider now. It came for him, huge mandibles dripping poison. Snorri ducked its bite, rolled under its belly, and chopped upwards. Felix heard the spider’s evil scream and watched it sag in the middle. Snorri rolled out from behind it and lashed out at its rider, but the shaman leapt from his seat to avoid the blow, and scuttled away. Powerful he might be, but he did not have the nerve to face the Slayer.

  Ulrika calmly nocked her bow and fired, nocked her bow and fired. With every shot an orc fell. The death of her bodyguards seemed to have goaded her into a calm, silent killing rage. Malakai stood next to her, his rocket tube over his shoulder. He took careful aim and pulled the trigger. Sparks flew from the rear of the tube and the rocket whizzed forth tearing through the orc ranks, killing half a dozen. Malakai threw down his weapon.

  ‘Last rocket,’ he explained, unslinging his portable gatling cannon and starting to blaze away. Bjorni and Ulli fought back to back against the huge orcs. They used their opponents’ size against them expertly, ducking between legs, moving through the press of bodies, hacking and chopping as they went. Felix felt useless and wished he could join in.

  Then he saw that Gotrek had fought his way to the orc chieftain.

  Ugrek confronted the dwarf with the axe. Good. It saved him hunting the stunty down and killing him. He bellowed a challenge and glared down at the dwarf. Surprisingly the Slayer did not flinch, which was unusual. Ugrek had never met anything on two legs that did not back away when confronted by his massive form. This made him slightly uneasy. Still it did not matter. He was twice the dwarf’s size and three times his weight. He was the toughest orc who had ever lived. He was going to kill this stunty.

  He lashed out with his cleaver. Surprisingly, the dwarf wasn’t there. That was unusual too. Ugrek knew he was fast for an orc. No one had ever been able to match his eye-blurring speed before. The dwarf struck back. That was good too. Ugrek liked it when his food put up a bit of a fight. It made things more interesting.

  Sparks flashed as their blades met. The power of the Slayer’s blow took Ugrek off guard. He was driven back by the force of the impact. The dwarf was strong. That was good too. Ugrek would gain some of that strength when he ate his heart. He lashed out with his axe. The dwarf ducked beneath it and aimed a counter blow at Ugrek’s legs. Ugrek leapt above it, and brought both weapons down at once, knowing there was no way the dwarf could avoid them both.

  The dwarf did not try. Instead, he used his axe two-handed and caught both blows in the haft of the weapon. The force of the impact drove him to his knees. He rolled backwards and away, coming to his feet easily. Ugrek was enjoying this. Already the dwarf had lasted longer than any foe Ugrek had ever faced, and he was showing no signs of running out of fight. Ugrek had always believed that you could measure an orc by the strength of his enemies, and when he killed this Slayer, all orcs would know that Ugrek was mighty indeed. The thought gave him some satisfaction.

  The dwarf came at him, beard bristling, a mad light in his eye. He unleashed a hail of blows at Ugrek, each faster and more powerful than the last. It slowly dawned on Ugrek as he parried desperately that the dwarf had not really been trying before. Being knocked down by Ugrek had goaded him to make a mighty effort. Ugrek was forced to admit that the Slayer was almost as mighty as he was. This was even better. More than ever Ugrek looked forward to eating his heart.

  His arms ached a little from parrying the dwarf’s blows. It felt like his hand had been nicked. This was unusual. He had never met a foe that had done that before. The Slayer aimed another blow at him and Ugrek raised his cleaver to parry. At the last moment, he realised his cleaver wasn’t there. In fact, his hand wasn’t there either. The pain he had felt was it being separated from his wrist. By the gods, that axe was sharp. He must have it, he thought.

  It was the last thought to pass through his brain before the axe descended, bringing eternal darkness with it.

  Felix watched Gotrek finish the orc chieftain. The bodyguards looked panicky, their morale already undermined by the flight of the shaman, the havoc wreaked by the dwarfs, and the screaming of their comrades behind them. A few turned and looked back to see the airship. It was the last straw. They must have thought the dwarf gods had come to punish them. First one then another turned and began to flee. Felix looked down to see that the battle had turned into a general rout. Orcs and goblins and humans all intermixed, and no longer fighting, streamed out of the valley in all directions. The relentless death toll inflicted by the Spirit of Grungni was too much for them.

  ‘I do believe we might survive this,’ Felix said to Ulrika, then wondered at the look of horror on her face. He turned to see what she was pointing at. A stream of fire was already receding into the depths of the mountain. Malakai’s rocket tube lay near at hand. Instantly Felix realised what had happened. A spark from the weapon had ignited the detonating powder.

  Could they possibly get down there and put it out, Felix asked himself? He knew he would not be able to, not in his wounded condition. And he would not ask Max or Ulrika to try something he was not willing to do. He had no idea how powerful the explosives down there were, or what the possible consequences of an explosion might be.

  ‘We’d best get out of here,’ he said and tried to move forward only to discover his legs weren’t working properly. He fell forward onto his face. His wound must have been worse than he thought.

  ‘Go!’ he shouted. ‘Save yourselves!’

  He felt himself being lifted up by Ulrika and Max and they carried him down the slope towards the dwarfs.

  ‘Prepare yourselves,’ he heard Max say. ‘The tunnel’s about to go up!’

  As one the dwarfs threw themselves flat on the ground. Felix felt the earth shake. There was a great blast of fire and heat from behind him, and the sound of rocks collapsing and stone grinding against stone.

  ‘There goes a king’s ransom,’ he heard Ulli mutter, then the sound of dwarf cursing filled the air.

  EPILOGUE

  Felix opened his eyes and saw the steel ceiling of the Spirit of Grungni. Borek and Ulrika stooped over him. He could tell by the rocking of the chamber that the airship was in motion.

  ‘I’m alive, then,’ he said.

  ‘Only just,’ Borek said. The wrinkles of his ancient face crinkled benevolently as he smiled. ‘There was some infection in your wounds. I am surprised that you are alive at all, with what Ulrika here has told me of your adventures. Slaying a dr
agon is not something most men live through.’

  Felix felt embarrassed as well as pleased. ‘I am glad to see you. I see you managed to repair the airship.’

  ‘Malakai left very specific instructions.’

  ‘Is he well?’

  ‘He and all the others. Although they are all disappointed about the treasure.’

  ‘Is it lost then?’

  ‘Nothing buried below the earth is ever lost to dwarfs,’ said Borek. ‘It will take years to excavate all of the rock but we will get it eventually.’

  Felix fell silent for a moment, thinking of the bodies of Steg and Grimme. They had received a more thorough burial than anything he could ever have given them. It was an alarming thought that he could have all too easily been buried with them. He reached out and took Ulrika’s hand.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Max says you’ll be up and about by the time we reach our destination.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Felix asked, fearing he already knew.

  ‘Praag,’ she said simply.

  He shivered, knowing the greatest Chaos army assembled in two centuries would soon be there too.

  BEASTSLAYER

  William King

  ‘Our battle with the dragon Skjalandir left me incapacitated for many days. The events of the particular few weeks that follow it are mercifully vague. I know we brought word of the arrival of the Chaos horde to the Tzarina of Kislev. I know we flew on to the city of Praag where my companion and his dwarf compatriots thought they would meet their dooms. I know we were welcomed in the City of Heroes by the duke himself, who turned out to be a distant cousin of my fair companion, Ulrika. Of the detail of these matters, however, I remember very little, possibly because they are overwhelmed in my memory by the apocalyptic events that were to follow them.

  ‘What happened in those following weeks caused me to plumb new depths of horror and despair. In my entire long and sorry career as the Trollslayer’s amanuensis, I have found myself in few more desperate places. Even today, I shudder when I recall the madness and turmoil of those dreadful days…’

  — From My Travels With Gotrek, Vol IV. by Herr Felix Jaeger

  (Altdorf Press, 2505)

  ONE

  Felix Jaeger looked northwards from the gate tower high above the outer wall of Praag. As if for reassurance, his hands rested atop the carved head of one of the huge sculptures that gave the Gate of Gargoyles its name. From his high vantage point, he had a perfectly clear view for leagues. Only the long snaky curve of the river looping off to the west broke the monotony of the endless plains surrounding the city.

  In the distance he could see the smoke of burning villages. It was war coming closer and it would reach the city in less than a day. He shivered and drew his tattered red cloak around his tall, lean form although it was not cold yet. If truth be told it was unnaturally hot. These last days of autumn had been warmer in Kislev than many a summer in his homeland, the Empire.

  It was the first time in his life he had ever prayed for the onset of snow. Winter was deadly here, an untiring ally who slaughtered the foes of Kislev, or so the locals claimed. Lord Winter was their greatest general, worth a legion of armed men. He wondered whether he would live to see winter’s arrival. Even Lord Winter might prove powerless against the Chaos warriors and their evil magic.

  The warriors of the advancing army out there were not mere mortals, but worshippers of Chaos fresh from the Northern Wastes. Of all the foolish things he had done in his career as Gotrek Gurnisson’s henchman, putting himself in the way of the armies of the Dark Powers was conceivably the most foolish.

  Felix had barely recovered from wounds taken in the battle with the dragon Skjalandir, and the orcish armies that had tried to take the dragon’s treasure. The wizard Max Schreiber had healed him and had done the work well, but still Felix was not sure that he felt as strong as he had before. He hoped he could wield his sword with his customary skill when the Chaos warriors came. He would need to. If he could not, he would die. Most likely he would die anyway. The black-armoured riders and their brutal followers were not famous for their mercy. They were unrelentingly savage and lived only to kill and conquer in the name of the daemonic powers they worshipped. Even the massively thick walls of Praag would not hold them back for long. If those wicked warriors failed, then the dark magic of their sorcerous allies would surely succeed.

  Not for the first time, Felix wondered exactly what he was doing here, standing on the chilly walls of a fortified city, hundreds of leagues from home. He could be in Altdorf right now, sitting in the offices of the family business, haggling with wool traders and counting gold. Instead he was readying himself to face the greatest invasion the world had seen in two hundred years, since the time when Magnus the Pious had driven back the legions of the damned, and reunited the Empire. He glanced over at his companion.

  As ever it was impossible to tell what the Slayer was thinking. The dwarf looked even more brutish and sullen than usual. He was short, the tip of the crest of red-dyed hair that rose above his tattooed and shaven head barely reached Felix’s chest, but he was more than twice as broad as the man. In one hand he held an axe that Felix would have struggled to lift with both his hands, and Felix was a strong man. The Slayer shook his head, and the gold chain that ran from ear to nostril jingled. He knuckled the patch that covered his empty eye socket, and spat over the wall.

  ‘They will be here by nightfall, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘Or my father was an orc.’

  ‘You think so? The scouts say they are burning the villages as they come. Surely so great a horde could not move so quickly?’

  Felix had a better idea of the size of the horde than almost any man in Kislev. He had flown over it in the airship, Spirit of Grungni, when he and the Slayer and their dwarf companions had returned from the lost city of Karag Dum. It seemed half a lifetime ago but was scant months in the past. Felix shook his head, amazed at how much his life had changed in that month, more than at any time since he had sworn his oath to follow the Slayer and record his doom in an epic poem.

  In that time, he had ridden in a flying ship, visited a buried dwarf city in the blighted wastes of Chaos, fought with daemons, and dragons and orcs and beastmen. He had fallen in love and pursued a troubled affair with the Kislevite noblewoman Ulrika Magdova. He had almost died of wounds. He had journeyed to the court of the Ice Queen, the Tzarina Katarin, bringing word of the enemy army to that fearsome ruler, and then he had come here with Gotrek and the others to help resist the invasion. It seemed as if he had barely time to catch his breath, and now he was caught up in a full-scale war with the assembled powers of Darkness.

  He wondered again at his reasons for being here. Certainly he still held to his oath to Gotrek. And Ulrika was here, waiting to see if her father and his men would make it to Praag before the Chaos horde. Felix knew she was going to be disappointed there.

  He brushed a lock of long blond hair from his eyes, then shielded them with his hand. In the distance he thought he could make out flashes of eerie red and gold light. Sorcery, he thought. The daemon worshippers are using their forbidden magic. He shivered again, thinking that perhaps it would be better to be in the counting house back in Altdorf.

  He could not quite bring himself to believe it though. He knew he had become accustomed to a life of adventure. Even before his travels with Gotrek, life in the capital had seemed unbearably dull. He knew that no matter how often he thought a little dullness might improve his life, he could not go back to being what he had once been. Not that there was much chance of that anyway. He was in disgrace for killing a fellow student at the university in a duel. And he and Gotrek were wanted by the law for their part in the window tax riots.

  ‘Do you think that the Kislevites are the only ones who have scouts, manling?’ Gotrek asked. ‘The Chaos warriors will have outriders too. Not even they are mad enough to ride without them. They will be here soon.’

  Felix did not like to speculate on what the follow
ers of the Dark Powers were mad enough to do. To him it seemed madness enough to want to worship daemons anyway. Who could tell what else they were capable of? On the other hand, when it came to making war, it did not matter how crazed they were. They were as deadly as any other army, far more so than most. In this, the Slayer was most likely right. He said so. Gotrek sucked his blackened teeth.

  ‘Tis late in the year for an army to be marching,’ he said. ‘The warlords must be confident they can take Praag before winter sets in. Either that or they don’t care.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Felix sourly. ‘Always look at the bright side, don’t you?’

  Gotrek cocked his head to one side, and spat over the wall. ‘They must be planning some trick.’

  ‘Maybe they have magic. Maybe the prophets of doom back there in the city are right. Maybe winter will not come this year. It is unseasonably warm.’

  The words came out quickly and with less calm than he would have liked. He knew he was half hoping the Slayer would contradict him. After all, the dwarf had more experience of this than he did.

  Gotrek grinned, showing the blackened stumps of most of his teeth. ‘Now who is looking on the bright side, manling?’

  Sombre silence fell between them. Felix scanned the horizon. Dust and smoke clouds continued to rise. Way off in the distance, he could swear he heard the sound of horns, the clash of weapons, the screams of dying men. Only your imagination, he told himself.

  Down below them, workers slaved away driving more sharpened stakes into the great pit that now lined the base of the walls. Behind them, more labourers reinforced the outer wall of the city with buttresses. Gotrek had done more than his share of supervising them. Under normal circumstances, Felix would have been hard put to believe these massive fortifications needed any augmenting. The walls of Praag were ten times as high as a man and so wide you could drive a wagon along the top. Towers bristling with siege engines spiked the walls every hundred paces or so. Felix could smell the acrid reek of alchemical fire coming from some of the towers. He shivered to think there was a weapon nearly as dangerous to its user as any enemy, but so desperate were the Kislevites that their alchemists guild had been producing it night and day since news of the invasion arrived. They were preparing containers of it for the siege engines.