by Warhammer
The easiest thing would be to simply wait for them to disappear down the street, and then head back to the inn. He could tell the Slayer what had happened. If it came to violence, he was certain that Gotrek could handle this pair or any dozen like them. Provided he had warning. That seemed like the best plan.
‘I tell you, Olaf, we missed him. He went into one of those doors back there.’ It was the big man speaking.
‘Nah, he couldn’t have. And why? Who’d he know in those buildings?’
The voices were coming closer again. It sounded as if the men were stopping for a moment to check the doorways as they went. Felix wondered if he could make a break for it. It was dark and misty so he reckoned he had a good chance. But if the men were faster runners than he, or knew the area better, or if one of them simply had a knife and made a lucky throw then things might go badly for him. They did not look like men he wanted to turn his back on. Perhaps he could shout for help. If the watch came these thugs would surely run.
If the watch came, he thought, and if these men did not have confederates nearby who were attracted to the noise. Calm yourself, Felix told himself. There are only two of them here for certain, don’t let your imagination populate the night with killers, or fear might keep you from doing anything. He felt the familiar sense of weakness in his limbs he always got before a fight and ignored it. His mind seemed to be working with great clarity now, ignoring his fear, considering his options.
If these two men were professional sell-swords, his chances were slim. Felix knew he was a good swordsman, but he was outnumbered, and if they were competent they would make the most of that advantage. All it would take would be one well-placed or lucky blow, and his life would be over. He would never see Ulrika again. Suddenly the threat of the Chaos army and all his other worries seemed to recede to a great distance, to become petty and unimportant. The necessary thing was simply to live through the next few minutes, then he would deal with any other problems life presented. Suddenly, living was desperately important to him. It did not matter whether the Chaos army swarmed across the wall in the next day or the next hour. He wanted that time, no matter how little it might prove to be, and these men wanted to rob him of it.
A clear, cold anger filled him. He was not going to let them do that. Not without a fight at least. If he needed to do murder here so be it. It was his life or theirs and he had no doubt whose was most important, at least to him. Slowly, knowing he would need to seize whatever small advantages he could, he unbuckled the clasp of his cloak and slipped it off, holding it wadded up in his right hand. As stealthily as he could he began to withdraw the blade from the scabbard, and he was grateful that the magical blade slid near silently out.
‘Hush!’ said the big man. ‘I thought I heard something.’
Best take him first, thought Felix. He is the more dangerous of the two.
‘Most likely a rat. The city’s full of them. Maybe there’ll be some of those ratmen. I heard they had problems with them down in Nuln. Damn. I wish Halek would do his own dirty work instead of sending us out on a night like this. I can almost smell winter.’
‘Be grateful to the Great One that you will be alive to see winter. Most in this city won’t.’
‘Well Felix Jaeger won’t be for sure if I get my hands on him. I intend to make sure he pays dearly for making me miss my kip. I could be in a warm bed with a warm whore in the Red Rose if it wasn’t for him.’
‘There’ll be time enough for that later. Once the business is done.’
‘Aye, if we don’t get sent out again after the dwarf. I heard he’s a right hard bastard.’
‘Poisoned knife will do for him same as anybody else,’ said the big man. He sounded like he was almost on top of Felix now. A shiver of fear passed through Felix at the mention of the word poison. These men weren’t taking any chances. He could not afford to either. Even the slightest slip might be his last. His knuckles tightened around his cloak. It was nearly time.
‘If it weren’t for this mist I would wait across from the inn and put a crossbow bolt into him,’ said the fat man.
‘And how would you do that without being noticed,’ asked the big man. His shadow was right in front of Felix now. ‘That’s just the sort of dumb idea that I would–’
Felix leapt from his concealment and tossed his cloak. It billowed outwards as he threw it and covered the big man’s head. Even as it entangled him, Felix struck, viper-fast. His blade passed right through the big man’s stomach and out of his back. Felix twisted the blade as he pulled it free. Poison, he thought, fuelled with desperate rage and fear. Try and use poison on me, would you? The big man’s scream rang through the night.
His partner might have been fat but he was fast. He lashed out almost instinctively and only a swift leap backwards got Felix out of the way of the knife. He could not be sure, but he thought he saw a smear of sticky black substance on the blade. The big man fell forward. His weight twisted the sword out of Felix’s grip. Damn, he thought. Things weren’t going quite according to plan. He backed off quickly, fumbling for his own dagger as he kept his eyes on the outline of the fat man. He didn’t want to risk even the slightest cut from that weapon.
‘Bastard! You’ve done for Sergei, by the looks of it. Well, don’t matter. Means I’ll stand higher in favour with his nibs when I bring back your head.’
Felix was grateful when his dagger cleared the scabbard. Now he had a chance, albeit a slim one. The fat man was holding the knife with a professional’s poise. Felix was a swordsman, and had little experience with anything but throwing knives. On the other hand, he thought, backing away from the assassin, he had killed two men with those and now might be a good time to try for a third.
He drew back his arm and made the toss. It was a tricky throw in the darkness against a shadowy moving target and even as he made the cast he knew it wasn’t going to work. All he had done was disarm himself. The man ducked, but Felix was in that heightened state of alertness where thought and action were almost one. Even as he realised his cast had gone astray some part of his mind, quicker than rational thought, had reacted. It had known the assassin would be distracted for a fraction of a second, which would give Felix an opening in which to attack.
He threw himself forward, bunching his fist and connecting a solid blow to the man’s chin. The pain in his hand was excruciating and he knew that in the morning he was going to suffer from bruised knuckles at the very least. Not that it mattered right now. If he survived he would worry about that tomorrow. The man grunted and swung upward with the knife. It was a professional’s blow, aimed in a short stabbing motion intended to bury the blade in Felix’s gut.
It was only the fact that he expected it that allowed Felix to block the blow, more by luck than judgement. Reaching down he caught the sell-sword’s wrist. It was thick and slippery with sweat and it took a near superhuman effort for Felix to stop the knife. The fat man was stronger than he looked and obviously experienced in close quarter combat. He twisted his knife arm, trying to break free and at the same time tried to knee Felix in the groin.
Felix shifted his weight so that the knee jabbed his thigh, and then did the unexpected, he kept twisting away and pulled the man forward at the same time, using his own weight and motion against him. The man fell sprawling and landed face down in the muck and cobbles. A long agonised groan burst from his lips, then he spasmed and lay still. Half expecting it to be some sort of trick, Felix kicked him in the head. There was no response, but anger and fear drove Felix to kick him again and again. After a minute he realised that the man was not feigning anything. He turned him over and saw that he had fallen on his own knife. It had not been a bad fall by the look of it. The blade had gone in only partially. Under normal circumstances it would have only been a nick really, not a fatal wound, but the poison the man was using must have been a strong one, for it had certainly sent him headlong into the realm of Morr, or whatever daemon god he had followed.
Spitefully Felix hoped th
e Powers of Chaos would punish him for his failure, then sanity returned and he retrieved his knife, sword and cloak. Looking at it, he thought the cloak was ruined but it still wasn’t a good idea to leave it lying around near the scene of a killing. You never knew, it might be recognised as his. He wadded it up and moved off into the night, walking quickly and purposefully, and trying not to look like someone who had just killed two men.
Prayers at the temple of Shallya could wait till he had cleaned the blood from his hands, he reasoned. He had better warn Gotrek that hired killers were after them. Not that the Slayer was likely to care.
Max looked down at Ulrika as she lay on the bed. Her face was pale. Sweat poured from her brow. Her eyes were wide and unseeing. Strange red blotches marked her beautiful face. His magical senses told him that she was failing fast. Her life force was draining away; her spirit was becoming separated from her body. Max shook his head and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. It was difficult. He felt that if anything happened to her he would die.
Calm yourself, he thought. Now is not a good time to be thinking like a schoolboy. Now is a time to concentrate all your resources on being a magician. Don’t let your personal feelings interfere with what you need to do here. He took another calming breath, and repeated one of the chants he had learned in his early apprenticeship, a meaningless rhythmic verse intended to soothe the mind and calm the senses. He opened his mind to the winds of magic and felt them respond to his call.
Max had been trained extensively in protective magics. Of necessity these included healing spells and spells intended to counteract diseases. It was not an area he had specialised in though, and he knew that plagues in particular were a tricky thing to neutralise. Nurgle was strong and there were too many other factors that could affect the outcome.
Fortunately, most of the ones he was familiar with were in Ulrika’s favour. She was young and healthy and had everything to live for. She was not starving. Her surroundings were clean. She had been in good health previously. He hoped that these things would make the difference.
He closed his eyes and drew on the winds of magic. Instantly he sensed something wrong. There was far more dark magic about than there should be and it was getting stronger. Of all the types of energy that the winds of magic carried it was the worst, and carried with it the promise of corruption, mutation, and undeath. He had thought he was prepared for this. After all, the Chaos army outside was drawing heavily on the evil power, but just the sheer amount of dark magic present was almost overwhelming. The touch of it was sickening. He breathed out and expelled the energy as quickly as he could. By focusing his mind he could draw on the other sorts; for this he needed a mixture of gold and grey. It was harder to get at now with all the dark magic in the air, but he knew he could do it.
Slowly, carefully, making sure to avoid any touch of the taint of Darkness, he plaited together the power. Opening all of his mage senses he gazed down on Ulrika. He could still see her on the bed, but now he could also see her aura, the reflection of her spirit. Things did not look good. An unhealthy green surrounded her, and he sensed the taint of dark magic within her. That was hardly surprising since the plague was magically generated by the followers of Nurgle.
He began to speak the incantation that would let him expel that dark energy. The tendrils of power he wove around her slowly began to seep through her skin. She stirred in her sleep, moaning. Max kept the flow of power strong, joining the magical energy to her spirit, feeding her life force drawn partially from himself and partially from the winds of magic. For a moment he felt he was being sucked down into the dark whirlpool of death. He felt the tug of that infinite vacuum, and his own skin became cold and clammy. He poured more power into her, but it was like dropping water onto the sands of a desert.
He felt his own life draining away, and fought against it. This was one of the dangers of magical healing of this type. When the subject was close to death, the life of the healer was in equal peril. A small panicked part of his mind fought against the current, desiring him to break the contact and save himself. He refused to listen to it, and he refused to give in. Like a swimmer fighting against a powerful undertow, he struggled on, fighting for his own life and Ulrika’s. He offered up a prayer to Shallya, and found some more energy within him, then he realised that something within the woman herself had awoken and was helping him. Suddenly the moment of crisis was past. He no longer felt as if he was drowning. The constriction in his chest was gone.
That was the hard part, he told himself, knowing it was not quite true. He had stabilised her condition and he could keep it that way for as long as he provided the energy, but his power was not infinite, and he doubted he could maintain the link for as long as she needed to heal. Her body was going to need help. Slowly he extended the tendrils of power once more, feeling for the pockets of dark magical energy within her. One by one he struck at them, lancing them as a surgeon would lance a boil, expelling the dark magic from her. It emerged from her mouth and nostrils like a noxious cloud of dark green smoke.
Next, he sent the energy seeking out the tiny daemons of disease that infected her, entities so small that they were invisible to the naked eye but not to the sorcerous senses he was using. The tide of magic raced through her bloodstream and internal organs cleansing them. It was hard, tiring work requiring the highest level of concentration. Max already felt as tired as he had after his sorcerous duel with the skaven grey seer but he kept at it, kept his mind focused. It was a long time before he felt sure he had exterminated every one of the loathsome plague-bearing entities.
The final stage now, he thought wearily, drawing on the last of his energies. He sent out the command to sleep, to heal, and to replace the vital force that had been lost. Then having done it, he closed his eyes and offered up another prayer of thanks. He touched her brow. The fever had broken. The sweating was subsiding. He hoped he had done enough. There was no way to tell. Then he fell asleep in the chair beside the bed.
Felix found him there minutes later when he came in to get a new cloak and clothing. He had paused by the well outside to cast a bucket of water over himself and get the worst of the blood off. He doubted that any of the guards would come to the White Boar in search of the sell-swords’ killers but he was doing his best to cover his tracks. The jokes about rain that had greeted him when he entered he had countered with a tale of dumping a bucket of water over his head to sober himself up.
As he entered the room, he could tell from Ulrika’s breathing that she was starting to recover, and he thanked Shallya for her mercy. As quietly as he could, he changed his clothes and went back downstairs to see if he could find the dwarfs and warn them. Even as he entered the common room, he could hear Ulli and Bjorni bellowing out some old dwarf drinking song. Behind them came Gotrek and Snorri. None of the Slayers looked any too sober.
‘I was attacked,’ he said.
‘You don’t say, young Felix,’ replied Snorri. ‘Did we miss a good fight?’
He knew it would be a long time before he could get them to take this seriously.
SEVEN
Ivan Petrovich Straghov looked up and laughed. White flakes of snow mingled with the rain. The cold northern wind threatened to freeze his old bones. Good, he thought. It looks like winter will come early this year. The earlier the better. Blizzards would slow the army pouring out of the north. Frostbite would freeze fingers from hands. Exposed flesh would stick to metal. He doubted an army of any size could move through the Kislevite winter.
Slowly his good humour waned. Who knew what these Chaos worshipping bastards were capable of? Maybe they had magic to protect them. In any case, even if the marauding tribes were cut down by hunger, he did not doubt that the Chaos warriors and the beastmen would survive. He had encountered them before coming down out of the Troll Country in the depths of winter. The beastmen would most likely eat their human allies. The black-armoured warriors did not seem to need food or water or shelter, a trait they shared with their i
nhuman steeds.
He told himself not to be so gloomy. Every little helped, and if Lord Winter and his icy troops destroyed a few thousand of the daemon lovers he would be grateful. Right now, Kislev needed all the help it could get.
He urged his horse to greater efforts. It was only a couple of hours’ ride now to Mikal’s Ford and the Gospodar muster. He was looking forward to joining it. He did not doubt that if it descended on the Chaos horde, win or lose there would be a mighty killing.
Felix Jaeger raced across the battlements of Praag. Snow fell all around. Chill wind cut at his face. The monstrous siege engine crashed into the wall. The stones shook beneath the impact of the massive ram. Chains clanked as a huge ramp descended from the top of the tower. With a roar, fur-garbed tribesmen emerged. Their leader was a black-armoured Chaos warrior, seven feet tall, an enormous mace clamped in one hand, a huge broadsword held firmly in the other.
Even before the Chaos worshippers could move, Gotrek was among them, followed by Snorri and Bjorni. The dwarfs carved a path through the Chaos lovers straight at the leader. Felix was right behind them, Ulli at his side. The demoralised human defenders took heart and threw themselves back into the struggle.
Felix felt the ramp flex beneath the weight of the mass of warriors upon it. He hacked at the shield of one of the marauders and kicked another one off the ramp to fall to his doom in the spike-filled trench below. Ahead of him, he could hear Gotrek’s bellowed war cry as the Slayer chopped down the leader of the attackers and hacked his way through the followers. At times like this the dwarf seemed unstoppable, an ancient war god of his people returned to wreak havoc on their enemies.