by Warhammer
Tomorrow did indeed reveal what had happened. The bodies of the fugitives had swollen and turned black overnight. Through the spyglass Felix saw with horror that the bodies of the beggars were marked with the signs of disease. Massive blisters full of pus were raised off their skin. The smell was awful. Felix covered his nose. He did not know if there was any truth in the idea that plagues could be spread by their stench but he was not taking any chances.
‘The guards did the right thing,’ Gotrek said. ‘Letting those refugees in would have brought the plague here. This is Nurgle’s work. The followers of the Plague Lord did this.’
‘But that must mean they were probably just innocent peasants, captured when the Chaos horde advanced,’ Felix said with a shudder.
‘Aye,’ Gotrek replied darkly. ‘Most likely.’
‘This is a most ignoble way of fighting a war,’ said Felix.
‘Take your complaints to them, manling,’ said Gotrek pointing out into the sea of Chaos scum. ‘They are the ones doing it, not me.’
Felix could hear the anger in the dwarf’s voice. Gotrek was no happier about this than he was. Another thought occurred to him. The guards, too, must know that they shot down some of their innocent kinsfolk. It was all part of a simple ploy to help break down the morale of the defenders. And Felix knew that it would most likely work. Plague was a thing against which there was no defence.
‘What can we do?’ Felix asked.
‘I will get Snorri and some of the lads and we’ll haul the bodies away for burning.’
‘You might get the plague too then,’ said Felix.
‘Dwarfs don’t suffer human diseases, manling. We’re too tough for it.’
Felix sincerely hoped he was correct.
The White Boar was packed. The dwarfs all sat apart in one corner. No one was speaking to them, since they had come back from burning the bodies at the gate. No one wanted to take the chance of catching the plague. Felix, Max and Ulrika were the only people who would even take a table by them. If the dwarfs were offended, they gave no sign. Well, they were all Slayers, Felix thought, they probably didn’t see anything unusual in people avoiding them.
‘I can’t wait for the Chaos warriors to attack,’ bellowed Ulli. ‘I am going to kill at least a hundred of them.’
The other Slayers looked at the youth with mild incredulity. He did not seem to notice but just kept on boasting. ‘I will chop them to bits! Then I’ll jump up and down on the pieces.’
‘Snorri doesn’t see much point,’ said Snorri drunkenly. ‘They’ll be dead by then.’
‘You can never tell with Chaos worshippers!’ Ulli shouted. ‘They have all those magical powers.’
‘You’d be an expert on that,’ Gotrek said with heavy irony.
‘No! I just know what my old granddad used to say about Chaos worshippers. He was here in Praag. The last time they attacked.’
A murmur of disbelief rose from the other tables. Ulli’s shouts were too loud to be ignored by anyone in the bar. It wasn’t crowded enough for the general hubbub to drown him out.
‘Is that possible?’ Ulrika asked in a low voice. Felix nodded. It certainly was. Before he could say anything more, Max spoke eagerly.
‘Yes. Dwarfs live far longer than most humans. They are different from us. Even an average dwarf can live to be 250 years old quite easily. There are records of some dwarfs reaching 400, and legends of some of them living for over a millennium.’
‘I doubt any of those dwarfs will live to be two centuries old,’ Felix said sourly. ‘They are all Slayers.’
Max looked at Felix with a superior smile that he was starting to resent. ‘In that case, Felix,’ he said pedantically, ‘they will be the exception rather than the rule. I believe dwarfs suffer far less from disease than us, and the effects of ageing only appear to make them stronger and hardier for a long time. It is only in the very last stages of their lives that they begin to show any signs of decrepitude.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Felix, reaching over and squeezing Ulrika’s hand just to annoy him.
A frown passed over Max’s face. Ulrika withdrew her hand. It was Felix’s turn to be annoyed. He wondered if she understood what was going on, was even, perhaps, in some ways encouraging it. The frown vanished from Max’s brow.
‘You’ve heard of longbeards. They’re the toughest dwarf warriors,’ Max said. Perhaps it was the beer, but his tone was starting to annoy Felix unreasonably.
‘Believe me, I have travelled long enough with Gotrek to be more familiar with the nature of longbeards than most men.’
Max nodded, seeming to accept this. Felix noticed he wasn’t drinking. In fact, Felix had not seen him drink since they had left Karak Kadrin. ‘Would you like some wine, Max?’ he asked. ‘I can order you some. I’ll pay.’
‘No thanks,’ Max said. ‘I don’t drink any more.’
‘Why not?’
‘It interferes with my magical abilities.’
‘That’s a pity. Still, we’re going to need those abilities soon.’
‘We’re going to need every man who can wield a blade soon too. That army is not going to stand back forever.’
Suddenly the doors of the White Boar crashed open. A gang of very marked, very nasty-looking men entered. They were all wearing stained white tabards with the sign of an eye. White hoods were flung back from their faces. Their leader was a tall, gaunt fanatical-looking man.
‘Why is this licentiousness continuing?’ he bellowed. There was a brief silence and then some of the mercenaries at the tables started asking each other what ‘licentiousness’ meant. This only seemed to enrage the fanatic more.
‘The armies of Chaos stand beyond our gates. They are poised to sweep over the lands of men with fire and sword and yet here we find men drinking, whoring and gambling and engaging in every form of vice.’
As he spoke his burning eyes came to rest on Ulrika. Her face flushed. Her hand went to the hilt of her sword. Felix could understand. She did not like being mistaken for a tavern wench.
‘Get lost!’ Ulli bellowed.
‘Can’t you see Snorri has some serious drinking to do?’ shouted Snorri.
‘And I have a couple of these wenches to bounce,’ Bjorni added, a wicked leer contorting his repulsively ugly face.
‘Silence, subhuman scum!’ bellowed the witch hunter. ‘You are in league with the foul daemons beyond.’
Felix shook his head, knowing only too well what was about to happen. There was a brief appalled silence from the Slayers’ table. The dwarfs all glanced at one another as if unable to believe anyone would be stupid enough to insult them in this fashion. Felix could not quite believe anyone could be that stupid himself. Oh well, this loud-mouthed fanatic and his bully boys were going to learn the hard way.
‘I suggest you leave now,’ said Max rising from the table, and clutching his staff. It was obvious to all that he was a wizard. Being ordered to go by a mage was not a thing calculated to calm a Kislevite bigot, Felix judged. If anything, Max’s attempt to calm things was somewhat akin to trying to put out a fire by pouring oil on it.
‘Take this daemon-loving wretch outside and teach him a lesson,’ the witch hunter shouted. Felix wasn’t feeling too fond of Max at the moment but he was not about to let that happen. Max had been a comrade on many dangerous adventures. Felix stood up, and put his hand on his sword hilt too.
‘Why don’t you head out the main gate?’ he suggested softly. ‘You’ll find plenty of Chaos worshippers there. You’re rather too quick with your accusations in here for my liking.’
‘And who are you to speak so knowledgeably about the Darkness?’ asked the leader of the witch hunters. He looked closely at Felix and then at Gotrek. He seemed to recognise them. It was hardly surprising. They had become very well known since the fight at the gate. Still, there was something in this recognition that Felix did not like.
‘Who are you to be asking my name?’ countered Felix.
‘His name is Ul
go,’ Ulrika said softly. ‘I have seen him before.’
‘And why have you been spying on me, slut?’ asked Ulgo nastily. Something had hardened in the man’s attitude. He seemed determined to provoke a fight.
Felix was tired of this now. He was tired of these men who obviously did not have enough enemies to fight outside the city. ‘Get out!’ he said. ‘The laughter of the Dark Ones will be your only reward if you start a fight in here. We are all enemies of Chaos here.’
‘That remains to be proven,’ Ulgo pronounced with the blazing certainty of the fanatic. He drew his blade. ‘Take them outside and burn them,’ he told his men. The bully boys looked only too pleased with this order. They drew their weapons too.
‘If you are not out of here by the time I count to three, you will all die,’ said Gotrek. Even Felix was shocked by the menace in his voice. The Slayer was as angry as Felix had ever seen him, and was obviously not in the mood to put up with these fanatics. ‘One.’
‘You cannot tell me what to do, Chaos lover,’ said Ulgo, brandishing his blade menacingly.
‘Two,’ said Gotrek. He ran his thumb along the blade of his axe. A bead of bright red blood appeared. Looking at his squat muscular form, the witch hunters behind Ulgo began to get nervous. Ulgo obviously did not realise his peril. He strode forward to loom over Gotrek menacingly. His sword was drawn back to strike. Here was a man too foolish to live, thought Felix. One who was more used to intimidating people than to being intimidated.
‘Don’t think you frighten me, I’ll–’ Ulgo began to lunge forward.
‘Three.’
The axe flashed forward.
Ulgo’s head rolled on the floor. Blood spattered everywhere. Droplets of it landed in Felix’s beer.
Gotrek sprang lightly over the corpse and moved towards the doorway. The remaining witch hunters turned and fled. Deathly silence fell over the tavern.
‘You probably should not have done that,’ said Felix.
‘He interrupted my drinking, manling. And I gave him fair warning.’
‘I hope the city watch thinks the same way as you do.’
‘The city watch have better things to do.’ The Slayer stooped and picked up the corpse of the dead witch hunter. Effortlessly he threw it across his shoulders, and made his way to the door, kicking the head in front of him as he went. As he strode out into the darkness, Felix found himself thinking, there’s another one who does not care how many enemies he makes. Felix did not doubt that after this night they would have many enemies inside the city themselves. Witch hunters were not usually partial to those who killed their leaders. Gotrek returned.
‘It’s your round, Snorri,’ he said. ‘And hurry it up. Killing loudmouths is thirsty work.’
A barmaid had already thrown sawdust on the blood. Half a dozen customers departed, doubtless to make reports to whomever they thought would pay them most for the information. Once again, Felix found himself wondering why he had ever come to this place.
Gotrek slumped down at his table. ‘Interesting,’ he said.
‘What’s interesting?’ Felix asked.
‘The loudmouth’s head was not the only one in the street.’
‘What?’
‘It seems our daemon-worshipping friends outside the city are firing the severed heads of their prisoners over the walls. Corpses too.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘Tomorrow will doubtless tell us more, manling. Right now I want my beer.’
Felix was getting a little sick of being told that tomorrow he would find out more, but there did not seem to be much he could do about it. He shook his head. He noticed that Max was giving him a troubled look.
‘What is it?’ Felix asked.
‘That witch hunter seemed in an awful hurry to pick a fight.’
‘That sort always is.’
‘Yes, but why with Gotrek?’
Felix could not answer that question.
SIX
The stink made Felix sick. He had seen plagues before. He had seen the horror of a city besieged before. In Nuln, the dead had fallen in the streets where they lay from diseases bred by the foul Plague Monks of Clan Pestilens. But he had never quite witnessed anything like this. It was as Gotrek said. The Chaos forces were firing corpses over the walls using those monstrous trebuchets and catapults they had built. The bodies fell from hundreds of feet, and, already bloated and rotten exploded on impact with the cobbles sending great belches of corpse gas and pus everywhere, leaving yellowing bones and skulls exposed to sight.
What manner of being could fight a war in this fashion, Felix wondered, as he made his way through the haunted streets towards the White Boar? In all his reading, he had never even seen hints of this foul tactic. Yet he knew it was an effective one. People were vomiting and retching at the sight of the corpses. Worse, some of them were starting to cough. Felix knew that this was just the first, and doubtless the least, symptom of what was to follow. Already rumours of plague were everywhere.
He glanced over at Ulrika. She too looked grim. Of course their surroundings would depress a drunken jester. Praag was not a cheerful city at the best of times. The architecture was sombre. Horned gargoyles clutched the eaves of buildings. Hideous leering faces were carved on the walls, mementoes of the long war fought two centuries ago against the forebears of the army that now waited outside the gate. And there was worse. There was an atmosphere of brooding gloom, that seemed to have intensified with the presence of the Chaos horde, that responded to it being there. Sometimes out of the corner of his eye, Felix thought he saw strange shapes moving in doorways, in alleyways, across roofs. Whenever he looked though, there was nothing there. He was left with the sense that something had just ducked out of sight, but he could never quite see what it was.
He smiled at Ulrika. She did not smile back. Her face was pale and drawn. She coughed. She was like the city, becoming gloomier by the day. It was like sharing a bed with a stranger these days. They did not seem to be able to find anything to talk about. They could not find much joy in anything. And yet, every time he thought about ending things, he could not. It was as if he were tied with invisible chains.
He understood she was worried. Under the circumstances who would not be? Both their lives were in danger. And, bad as it was for him, this must be harder for her. Her whole life had been uprooted. Her father was missing. Her country was invaded. She was threatened by plague and dark sorcery as well as with slaughter. It was not quite the same for him. He shook his head and almost laughed.
He was starting to realise how much he had changed during his wanderings with Gotrek. He was afraid, but his terror was a controlled thing, bubbling along just beneath the surface of his consciousness. The rest of his life was pretty much business as usual, as his father might have described it. Years of wandering had left him inured to hardship and hunger. The experience of dozens of dangerous adventures left him able to ignore the danger they were in until the very last moment. He had learned a little about pushing worries away until a time when they could be dealt with. Even the plague did not terrify him quite as much as it might once have done. He had survived plagues before, and somehow, he expected to survive this one as well.
In any case, he told himself, whether he worried about it or not, it would make little difference. If it was his destiny to die of plague, he would rather not know it, at least until he had to. Part of him knew that he was kidding himself. Deep in his brain part of him was all too aware of what was going on, and did worry about it, but right at this moment, he found he could ignore it.
‘Under the circumstances you seem unnaturally cheerful,’ said Ulrika.
They entered the main square, just outside the inner wall. This was still a place of business where dozens of merchant stalls could be found selling everything from leather goods to food. Only now soldiers of the ducal guard were doling out rations of corn to the poor, a leather cup the size of a small tankard going to each person. They carried it away in jugs, sac
ks, or rolled up bits of cloth. Felix could not help but notice that not all of those present looked poor. Some wore the clothes of artisans or merchants. The guard turned most of these away unless coin changed hands which it quite often did. Felix shrugged. Everybody had to eat. These people were most likely only doing their best for their families. Perhaps he should do the same. That was the way his father would look at these things, he thought.
‘It’s a lovely morning and we are still alive,’ he said. It was true too. The sky overhead was a perfect blue, almost untouched by cloud. The cool was more pleasant than the stifling blast of high summer. If you could ignore the stink of decomposing bodies it brought, the breeze was almost refreshing.
‘Make the most of it,’ said Ulrika, coughing. ‘Winter comes quickly here.’
‘You are a ray of sunshine today, aren’t you.’
‘It is our main hope,’ she said as if answering the question of a fool.
‘Why?’
‘Winter in Kislev is fierce. It is not a time to be outside the gates of a city. It is a time to be indoors, beside a fire, with plenty of provisions.’
There was something about her tone that goaded him, as he guessed she intended. ‘Perhaps Warlord Arek and his minions intend to be inside the walls by then, warming their hands on the burning buildings.’
‘Now who is not being cheerful?’
‘Watch out below!’ Felix leapt to one side to avoid being splattered by the contents of a chamber pot being emptied into the street. His leap almost carried him into a dung heap. He rocked back on his heels and nearly overbalanced. Ulrika caught him by the shoulder and laughed.
‘Perhaps you should have been a tumbler, or a clown,’ she suggested. Her tone was friendlier than it had been in days.
‘Perhaps,’ he said. They turned the corner and the apothecary’s shop was just ahead. Felix recognised it by the sign of the mortar and pestle hanging over the door. Even if he had not the long queue of glum-looking people outside would have been a give-away. The plague had made everybody worried about their health. Felix groaned. The last thing he wanted today was to be standing in a long line of folk waiting to be served.